I finished watching Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joys ´West world´- great show - where they explored the nature of consciousness vicariously in human-like androids. The AI of these droids believed they were human until later in the series they begin to break out of their scripted loops and start thinking for themselves.
After watching them transition from live-action chat bots to fully fledged sentient beings capable of executive initiative outside of their programming, I began to observe my daily routine and realized that I am no more human than an android in a wild wild west themed park shooting up the local saloon because I was programmed to go into town looking for, ¨mayhem¨.
In the morning I wake up; shower, eat, check my emails, go to work, do my usual work routine, go home, and repeat. You can say that these actions are all reasoned and that I can immediately halt this process- I agree with you- however, I could not do so indefinitely. Food is the product of income, i´d need to work for an income and to work i´d need to be presentable and Id need to be on time and go to sleep to be awake for all of this, ultimately i´d comply with my survival instincts orders. And then there is the need to reproduce which opens up another Pandora's box of rituals and conditions in order to satisfy this desire.
Going abit deeper, as far as we know right now our minds have evolved to think in patterns, these patterns become our behaviors and a persons collective behaviors over time is their life. The thought patterns that we have are directly related to situation and geography- terrorist attacks happening a lot in your city, the police issue a warning that there is a high likelihood of another attack happening soon, everyone is talking about what just happened, you along with millions of others will be hyper-cautious commuting to work. Now you are more than willing to follow the orders of authority without question, including the orders of your neighbor, who you hardly ever speak with, who tells you that the police told everyone to stay out of the center of the city today.
Marketers manipulate you to buy what they tell you to buy every time you look at a pixel by exciting your emotions- subconsciously and consciously- buy this product and this will happen for you but if you don´t buy this product this will never for you. The human mind is easy to be told what to do if the teller is big enough- blame your parents, and Freud in that order.
