# The Cognitive Advantages of Being of Two Minds, or Twelve, or Twelve Hundred > Source: > Published: 2026-07-23 17:18:14+00:00 [from Wallace Stevens, [Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45236/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-blackbird)] The literature on superintelligence and AI alignment tends to assume that an intelligent AI will have one set of values, one reward function, and consistent, determinate preferences. But speaking for myself, I'm not as consistent as that. You aren't either, I suspect. Now, maybe this is a defect in us that would be absent from a well-engineered intelligent system -- but I don't think so. There are advantages to having, so to speak, a splintered mind. *Two Minds for Two Theories* Suppose you're 85% confident Theory A is true and 15% confident Theory B is true. And suppose it's not obvious what follows from the two theories; discovering the implications will require substantial cognitive work. With that work, you could learn that Theory A implies C, D, and E, while Theory B implies F, G, and H. Here are three cognitive strategies: *All-in on the most probable.* Assume Theory A. Work for a while and discover that C, D, and E follow. Declare yourself done. *Both in a single model.* Build a single cognitive model with the representation .85*A & .15*B. Work with this complex representation and eventually discover .85*C & .85*D & .85*E & .15*F & .15*G & .15*H. *Two models.* Assume Theory A. Work a while and discover that C, D, and E follow. Then assume Theory B. Work a while and discover that F, G, and H follow. Now weight the theories and their implications .85 and .15. *All-in* is easiest and cheapest. But if you discover that Theory A is wrong and then need to act quickly on the consequences of Theory B, you'll be sorry you hadn't worked out those consequences in advance. *Single model* is probably hardest and slowest. It's difficult to keep track of complex conjunctive representations. *Two models* has all the advantages of *single model*, while being easier, less prone to error, and probably faster. I'll bet it's what you did when I described *single model*. You thought through the conjuncts separately, considering first what follows from A, then considering what follows from B, then stitching the results together, rather than thinking truly conjunctively through the whole process. Here's something that might be even better, if you could do it: Explore the two models simultaneously in parallel. One part of you works out the implications of Theory A, while another part of you works out the implications of Theory B. If we have design choices in creating an intelligence, maybe we should set it up that way. Arguably, much of the human mind does work that way. Even if attentive conscious processing is narrowly focused and serial, parallel nonconscious processes also operate simultaneously behind the scenes (compare [Dennett's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett) characterization of cognitive processes competing for "fame in the brain"). If I'm building a mind that I want to be robust against error while working efficiently, I might encourage it to divide itself into subminds with different opinions. The submind with the likeliest opinion gets the most control over the behavior and final judgments, but especially in risky situations, the subminds might compromise. For example, if the Theory A submind recommends Action X as slightly better than Action Y, while the Theory B submind predicts that Action X would be catastrophic, the system as a whole might choose Action Y. Obviously, this generalizes to numbers above two. *Subminds for Plans, Values, and Preferences* The same logic applies to plans. Mind 1 develops Plan A, while Mind 2 develops Plan B. If Plan A fails, Plan B is ready to go -- especially important if quick action is needed and Plan B takes time to construct. Perhaps less obviously, values and preferences might also be divided. Mind 1 values hard work and exercise. Mind 2 values lolling about at home reading fiction. You're a morning person: You wake with energy, and Mind 1 is in charge. Off you go for a jog, then to the office, blazing through your to-dos. By late afternoon, your energy flags and Mind 2 starts taking over. You can't just let Mind 1 be always in charge. You'd exhaust yourself, and you'd become a one-dimensional workaholic. Similarly, you can't just let Mind 2 be always in charge. You'd lose focus and vegetate. Hypothetically, a single, complex value representation might suffice -- the value equivalent of the "single model" above -- one stable, intricate set of conditionalized values, producing different behavior in the morning and evening. But the system needn't be built that way. And, phenomenologically, that's not how it feels to me. It feels like my morning self simply values one set of things while my evening self simply values different things. Sometimes I wish they would get along better. In the morning, I resolve to eat healthily all day, and I succeed until 9:00 pm. Then my evening self concocts an excuse to eat three big cookies. The next morning, looking at the bathroom scale, my morning self excoriates my evening self. Of course this is a simplification. The values are complex, both morning and evening. The point is, they're not constant. There's not, it seems, one steady underlying valuation. My cares, my preferences, my priorities fluctuate over time, depending on many factors -- not just time of day, but mood, situation, bodily state, what's salient at the moment, what memories or habits happen to arise. There isn't a stable preference ranking, a single momentary snapshot, that represents the real, undistorted me. My morning and evening and other selves are equally authentic and equally me. As in the Theory A vs Theory B case, we can shift from diachronic to synchronic -- from serial to parallel, from this-then-that to this-and-that simultaneously. My work self, my family self, my friend self, with their different preferences and values, are all simultaneously ready and updating in the nonconscious background. My work self, or selves, dominate at the office, but I could swiftly transition if an old friend were unexpectedly to knock on the door. And once in a while these other selves toss "off topic" thoughts up into my central conscious stream. *Back to AI* Maybe this isn't how the human mind works. I'm inclined to think it is, but set that aside. We certainly *could* build AI to work that way. Multiple competing models of the world. Multiple competing value sets. Shifting with evidence, shifting with circumstance -- perhaps not even capable of being distilled into a single conjunctive representation or single coherent value ranking. Multiply the minds -- generalizing from two to twelve or twelve hundred -- and the subminds can form coalitions. Mind 1 might have the plurality of the weight, but if Minds 2 to 5 all agree on something else, they might collectively outweigh it. With enough diverse subminds, the group dynamics of voting, coalition building, and delegation might arise. Let's not assume that an AI superintelligence ([if the concept even makes sense](https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.04986)) would be a hyper-coherent, hyper-rational entity that never contradicts itself and always maximizes the same fixed set of values. It might be instead a swirl of many contradictory, competing processes that compromise among one another and take turns in control. What would it feel like to be such an entity, if such an entity is capable of having experiences? Maybe it would feel something like being us. But I can also imagine such an entity being more multi-centered than we are (we, with our narrow, serial attention in a single stream of consciousness [or so we ordinarily assume]). Such an entity might have many eddies of consciousness, partly distinct, partly overlapping, not easily divisible into discrete, countable units -- neither one unified person, nor many discrete persons, but a swarm of partly discrete entities, like a network of half-joined plants or fungi that fade one into the next without sharp boundary. [