The Paradox of Effortlessness
What feels effortless often conceals immense complexity. The actions we perform without thought—recognising faces, navigating spaces, grasping objects—require vastly more computation than solving equations or playing chess. This inversion reveals a profound misalignment between experience and reality. We mistake ease for simplicity, overlooking that our effortless actions embody billions of years of evolutionary wisdom, while our effortful reasoning reflects mere thousands of years of cultural development. This paradox redefines intelligence—not as a single hierarchy crowned by abstract thought, but as a landscape of diverse capacities with different evolutionary histories. The most quintessentially human abilities are not those we consciously prize, but those we unconsciously possess.