Within the team-of-rivals framework, a secret is easily understood: it is the result of struggle between competing parties in the brain. One part of the brain wants to reveal something, and another part does not want to. When there are competing votes in the brain—one for telling, and one for withholding—that defines a secret. If no party cares to tell, that’s merely a boring fact; if both parties want to tell, that’s just a good story. Without the framework of rivalry, we would have no way to understand a secret.*** The reason a secret is experienced consciously is because it results from a
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