"It's Binary, My Dear Watson."

"We are immersed in a world of dichotomies comprising binary categories, such as true or false, real or fake, night or day, open or closed, win or lose, in or out, up or down, and the list goes on and on. Even digital technologies run on binary combinations of 0s and 1s. This includes AI chatbots, which harness the intellectual capital of seemingly countless strings of 0s and 1s."

"Our lived experience is a blend of binary and analog processing, comprising globs of dichotomies and gradients. Analog thinking allows us to think dimensionally in terms of gradations along a continuum, not just polar opposites. We perceive gradients of lightness and darkness, of stimulus intensity (light, sound, etc.), of pain severity, and of depth of emotion or feeling. The human brain weaves a more nuanced understanding of the world from binary pulses as well as gradients of information scaled along various dimensions."

Human cognition combines binary and analog processing to perceive and respond to the world. Many everyday categories are dichotomous: true/false, alive/dead, up/down. Digital technologies and AI operate on binary combinations of 0s and 1s. At a neural level, individual neurons fire in an all-or-nothing, binary manner. Simultaneously, cognition uses graded, analog representations for dimensions such as lightness, intensity, pain, and emotion. The brain integrates binary spikes and analog gradients to form nuanced perceptions and classifications. The interplay between binary categorization and analog gradation influences judgment, decision-making, and overall well-being.

Read at Psychology Today