Neural Population Codes: Nature's true democracy constitutes the basis of conscious thought and intelligent behavior
A careful analysis of Nature reveals that a perfect equilibrium of competition an cooperation is the key for any complex system fitness and success. Clearly, if the various parts unite and cooperate towards a common goal, the system will be stronger. Yet, who or how is such goal going to be set? Evidently it is no good to pull in the same direction, if the goal is a bad one and all efforts are aimed towards a wrong target. Nature seems to indicate that competition is the optimal form for a very complex system to determine what goals to strive for: several different prospective goals will be raised and compete against each other. Whichever comes out on top will be naturally selected as the system's next objective. Animal species are living proof of the optimality of this model of cooperation and competition. Indeed, the animal's brain will have all the cells in the organism work together in the same direction. On the other hand, inside the brain, various groups of neurons will ...