How Did “Wanting” Things Emerge?
Agency (“wanting” or “deciding” things) is as hard a problem in physics as consciousnessRocks don’t resist becoming sand but plants resist, by various strategies, becoming insect food. All life forms seem to need and want things; the most intelligent ones want more complex and less obviously necessary things. At New Scientist, we are told that wanting things is a “superpower” that physics can’t explain. But are we asking the wrong questions?
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