On Human Competence

What humans can do, but machines can’t

In [1], I defined Human Competence as:

“the set of all problems that machines cannot solve, but humans can”

I concluded this article by asking:

“What are the properties of Human Competence?”

The goal of this article is to answer this question.

How humans think

Humans think in two ways: “Thinking” and “Contemplating”.

Thinking is a very conscious act. It involves solving some specific problem, that is well defined. For example, “What route should I take to the office this morning?”. Thinking consists of following a set of deductions, or inductions that lead to the solution. It is easy to measure progress on solving the problem, on how optimal the answer is, and the extent of the error. While thinking involves facts, opinions and memories, the process of thinking reduces these to something simple. You might know all the roads in Colombo, but finding your route to the office involves narrowing this down to a much smaller subset.

Contemplation, on the other hand, is a mostly sub-conscious process, in that we aren’t aware of what’s going on. Contemplation also solves problems that are not defined, or that we are not consciously trying to solve. Contemplation often leads to creative composition. For example, poets often describe the process of writing the poem as “the poem…