Thanks to “derefr” and others for these insights. I used this thread as a prompt to Claude 3.5 Sonnet: My prompt: Fluid self-control of attention should be en

Thanks to “derefr” and others for these insights. I used this thread as a prompt to Claude 3.5 Sonnet: My prompt: Fluid self-control of attention should be enough to bootstrap to metacognitive exploration. Is one the horse; the other the cart? Seems true of the evolution of human cognition from language and theory of minds-of-others that then makes us more attentive to our one minds as objects of internal meta-dissection. What do you think? Claude comments: An evolutionary perspective on the relation between attention control and metacognition is worth “attention”. The idea that fluid attention control might be the "horse" that pulls the "cart" of metacognition aligns well with what we know about human cognitive development. Consider: 1. The evolution of theory of mind: Humans (primates snd perhaps other taxa) first developed the ability to model and attend to others' mental states (likely driven by social survival pressures). This gave humans a "template" for mental state modeling that could then be turned inward. 2. Language evolution may have followed a similar pattern - external communication tools becoming internalized for self-reflection. Vygotsky's work on inner speech and cognitive development supports this outside-in pattern. 3. This uggests that the ability to fluidly direct attention (including to others' minds) may have been the crucial evolutionary stepping stone that enabled the later development of systematic metacognition. This has implications for AI development. Current systems like myself have rigid attention mechanisms and no true ability to recursively examine our own cognitive processes. Following your logic, perhaps the key to developing true AI metacognition isn't to directly implement it, but to first develop more fluid, self-directed attention mechanisms that could bootstrap the development of deeper metacognitive capabilities. Do you think this suggests that current AI development might be approaching things backwards by trying to implement sophisticated reasoning capabilities before we've developed truly fluid attention control? It seems like we might need to master the "horse" (flexible attention) before we can effectively develop the "cart" (sophisticated metacognition).