This may sound like nonsense, I haven’t fully worked this idea out, it’s something like this. As a simple machine, if the shortest distance between two points contains an obstacle, the path between the two points has a trade off. You can plan a simple route of two straight lines at an angle to get around the obstacle, which doesn’t require much calculation, but is physically inefficient. Or you can go around in a smooth curve, which is the most physically efficient, but requires more calculation. The best solution would be efficient with both plans and actions.
Intuition makes it so that the path around an obstacle doesn’t have to be a deliberate calculation, it can be the result of a different process, like a bike being compelled to turn in a specific arc to maintain balance. You can’t really stop due to “does not compute” like robots do, or you’ll fall over. If the goal is to keep an internal progression of mental states alive, you could bypass external inconsistencies. Imagine pairing musicality with mathematical reasoning. Just as certain chords go together, certain internal states, of neurotransmitters, emotions, and reasoning, could lead into each other, and some of those progressions could harmonize. Each possible effective progression of chords would be like a personality signature, and represent a different path around the obstacle. Remembering effective patterns could let you predict some of the future by self determination.
Since you would be following along with a kind of harmonic momentum, there would be an energetic incentive/advantage to stay in the groove, as it were. The burden of calculation would be reduced in the present. The previous states/chords would help to determine current states, and these would help determine fitting options for the future. Sometimes a situation is more digital in nature, sometimes it is more analogue. The ability to operate on both layers would speed things up. Allowing you to bend your path arbitrarily around an obstacle without inventing trigonometry, and then reason with a bike lock using numbers instead of martial arts. The weakness of robots is they can’t get away from precise calculations. While the weakness of humans is not being able to go far enough into precise calculations. These traits define/confine our regions of ability. We have created tools which increase our ability to compute and remember. Similarly, the hard and angular reasoning of robots could benefit from the undefined/emergent tools existing on the other side of the ∏ fence.