Humans believe they have a rich sensory world with precise memories, deep, detailed, and accurate causal models of how things work, and powerful abstractions—because this is how it feels from the inside.
But when tested on simple tasks like “how do bicycles or eyes work” or “what does a US penny or the letter ‘g’ look like” or “if I drop a ball from a moving car, does it fall straight?”, this depth proves illusory.
Many human responses are shallow, incoherent, incomplete, unpredictive, and based on just a few sketchy features. (Much thinking is outsourced to others, the environment, habit, and a lifetime of trial-and-error.)