<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # A machine that never experiences meaningful... > A machine that never experiences meaningful competition among representations could become extraordinarily obedient while remaining epistemically sterile whenever circumstances fall outside the conceptual world anticipated by its designers. In the human machine, this can look like socialization carried to the point of homogenization, where family, school, religion, bureaucracy, profession, media, and peer sanction progressively narrow the range of permissible representations until obedience feels indistinguishable from common sense. A person may become so successfully normalized that competing interpretations no longer arise with enough strength to be examined, producing a kind of cognitive flatline in which conformity is experienced not as submission, but as reality itself. **Source:** [[breakouts/Human Machine|Human Machine]] <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->