The First Law of Intelligence: How your brain really works

Consciousness is not a binary property, nor an emergent accident. It is the inevitable outcome of any system forced to resolve internal conflicts in real time. The Interpreter-Channel Cognitive Model (ICCM) describes how scalar channel dynamics and coherence-seeking behavior together produce memory, instinct, selfhood, and the felt experience of being. Built on a foundational computational law of persistence filtering, ICCM unifies behavior, emotion, and cognition within a single minimal architecture. It discards the myths of memory storage, internal homunculi, and hard metaphysical problems, offering instead a testable blueprint for constructing true sapient systems and a deeper operational understanding of consciousness itself.