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--- name: ? status: compiling version: 0.0.0 maintainer: Neo dependencies: [patience] ---
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--- name: Human Brain type: biological hardware status: running version: homo_sapiens_3.4.1 released: "~300,000 BCE" maintainer: evolution (unresponsive to tickets) dependencies: - oxygen - glucose - sleep - social-contact - dopamine-loop license: proprietary (non-transferable, single instance) tags: - cognition - wetware - consciousness - pattern-matching - known-issues slug: human-brain ---
A 1.4kg electrochemical prediction machine that spends most of its runtime trying to avoid being wrong rather than trying to be right.
The brain runs on roughly 20 watts, which is impressive until you see what it does with that power. Core architecture is layered: old reptile stack at the bottom handling threat detection and hunger, mammal middleware managing emotion and social bonding, and a thin cortical veneer up top that believes it is in charge.
Signals travel as electrochemical pulses across approximately 86 billion neurons. Each neuron connects to thousands of others. The whole system is neuroplasticity-enabled, meaning the hardware rewires itself based on usage patterns, trauma, and whatever you watched at 2am.
Crucially: it is not a camera. It is a renderer. What you experience as reality is a half-second delayed, heavily compressed, aggressively interpolated simulation. The actual world is upstream of your access to it.
| Bug | Frequency | Workaround |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmation bias | Always on | None shipped |
| Ego inflation under stress | Common | Unpleasant to patch |
| Memory false-positive writes | Constant | Cannot be disabled |
| Loss aversion asymmetry | Consistent | Requires manual override |
| Optimism/pessimism miscalibration | Device-specific | Unclear if bug or feature |
| Sunk cost adhesion | Universal | Awareness rarely sufficient |
ERR_SLEEP_DEFICIT : Cognitive throughput degraded. Emotional regulation offline.
ERR_GLUCOSE_LOW : Executive function unavailable. Limbic system promoted to CEO.
ERR_RUMINATION_LOOP : Thread stuck. No timeout configured. Manual interrupt required.
ERR_COGNITIVE_DISSONANCE: Conflicting belief states. System will resolve by deleting weaker input.
WARN_NOVELTY_DECAY : Reward signal normalized. Previously exciting stimulus is now furniture.
User-accessible settings are limited. Most parameters are read-only and set by age five. Available adjustments include:
attention.focus: tunable via practice, caffeine, or boredomthreat_response.sensitivity: modifiable through therapy, exposure, or timereward_circuit.target: shifts with context, usually toward whatever is scarceNote: Factory reset is not supported. Hard reboot results in total data loss.
Q: Am I using my full brain? You are using all of it. Just not for what you think.
Q: Can I trust my own memories? You can treat them as high-confidence drafts with undisclosed revision history.
Q: Why does it feel like someone else is making my decisions? Because they are. The unconscious files decisions roughly 300-500ms before conscious awareness countersigns them. This is documented behavior, not a vulnerability.