CF Dictionary · Objectivism Terms
Unit-Economy of Consciousness
Oism's claim that consciousness has a limited budget of attention units (roughly seven) — driving the need for integration and automatization.
The unit-economy of consciousness is Oism's claim that conscious attention has a limited budget — roughly seven items at once. This is what makes integration and automatization necessary.
The constraint
- You can hold ~7 items in mind at once. Some say 5, some say 9; the number is approximate.
- Items can be simple ideas ("apple", "red") or integrated units ("apple-pie-recipe").
- An integrated unit counts as one item even if it contains many sub-ideas.
Why this matters
Without integration and automatization:
- You can't think about complex topics. They'd exceed your budget.
- You can't learn new things. You can't integrate them with old.
- You can't respond to surprises. You can't free up attention.
How CF uses this
CF's learning strategy is built around the unit-economy:
- Integrate new ideas with existing ones. (Reduces the count.)
- Automatize routines. (Frees up attention.)
- Use idea trees to externalise the structure. (Eyes don't count against budget.)
- Practice thinking itself. (Automatize the meta-skill.)
Anti-patterns
- Trying to think about too many things at once. You'll lose them.
- Refusing to integrate. "I want to see all the parts separately!" — you can't.
- Refusing to automatize. "I want to think about every step consciously!" — you can't.
"We have limited conscious attention, so we must make many mental connections automatic and habitual to reduce the burden on our attention, which frees up mental capacity to think about more advanced issues." — criticalfallibilism.com