Although what’s useful and thus perceived varies among species, certain basic considerations appear to be shared among all life-forms. For instance, it’s only useful to perceive aspects of the world that exhibit enough stability and regularity that information about them can help predict the future. If you’re looking out over a stormy ocean, perceiving the exact motions of trillions of water molecules would be rather useless because they tend to collide with each other and change directions within less than a trillionth of a second. On the other hand, perceiving that a humongous wave is headed
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