Pathways

[ayalove]

After much contemplating I have stumbled across a perspective of the human mind that I would like to share with everyone. It builds off the idea that each line of thought is literally a line of neurons. As we think more and more about a particular thought it reinforces this connection of neurons. This explains why when trying to memorize something repetition is often the go to method. These lines are placed in different locations amongst the brain and when we try and remember something our awareness scans the various paths of neurons until it hits the particular line of thought we are looking for. Pathways that have been reinforced will fire through its path easily while pathways that havn't been reinforced are likely to fire astray.

Much like a tree our brains various pathways can branch off in to other limbs and those into various twigs. Unlike a tree, however, our neurons can reattach at various places and various branches can converge into one solid growth. Its almost as if our brains are a very complicated formation of trees whos limbs are actually roots. These roots transfer our chemical awareness as if it were nutrients and water.

Now the point of all this? At the root of each tree, the stumpy base that grounds the organism, is an emotional state. This emotional state can be anything from angry, to sad, to in the moment, to sexually stimulated and even to euphoric. Theres a stump waiting to grow, a seed in the ground waiting for water, for almost every emotional combination imaginable. As we grow up and time goes by our brains create connections to all of these stumps. These connections can form from any kind of stimulation both external and internal. As a particular stump is exposed to more and more connections, it is fed more awareness. The more a stump is fed the larger it grows. Eventually our minds consists of these stumps, all of which varying sizes and you know what the kicker is? The stumps that are the biggest and have the most pathways are the ones we tend to default to! What funny, is that when we follow these pathways and we dont realize which stump we are traveling into, when we arrive at the stump we wonder how we got there. In that act alone we backwards rationalize the reason we got there. We find things to blame and the easiest way to do that is to find the more concrete pathways, the ones we've memorized, once we identify these pathways we point our fingers and find a way out of seeing the truth.

With all that being said I have found this idea extremely liberating! If we form these connections naturally then what is stopping us from choosing wich stump we want to water and which stump we want to starve? I'll tell you what is, action! When we see ourselves headed towards a stump we dont like we can take preventative action! We can take a time out and reconsider our emotional state. If we are headed down a particular path and we know we are going to end up unhappy we can take a proactive step in a different direction. By branching off we can create a divergent path almost like a detour and instead head towards a stump of our choosing. By going to this new stump we can reinforce this new pathway until it's natural and we dont have to think about it. As the new stump receives its water the unwanted one will fade to its death.

During the course of our day we can also take creative action. By striving for an emotion we can willfully create pathways towards it. Every morning I wake up and tell myself what emotion I want to strive for that day. Every night I think about everything that happened that day that reinforces the emotions I want. Eventually I think we can create the state of mind we dream about and move towards 100% bliss.

If this post seems kind of weird to you guys then I completely agree. I've been thinking about this idea constantly for the past few days and I wanted to get this on the nexus so it coud develop. There is no science to back up these claims but based on my experience I truly think this is how the brain functions. If any of you guys want to build on these ideas or even revise them it is encouraged! I hope everyone has an awesome time cultivating their gardens 8)
Love + Light

 

[Walter D. Roy]

The only question I had when reading this was what if the stumps in which the individual grows from aren't stumps at all? They are just another vein in the infinite network. Its all a system of branches that goes on for infinity so making it all interconnected.

Its an interesting concept though I really enjoyed reading it!

 

[dromedary]

You're more or less right about the way thoughts are formed, though the stump analogy is limited. It is part of the nature of a neural network that:

a) Neural pathways which we spend more time thinking about become stronger (until we decide the idea is wrong).
b) They are constantly branching (in an abstract sense) as new configurations are tried and subjected an evolutionary process where weaker chains die off sooner.
c) The process is regulated by feedback mechanisms, which in biological neural networks are usually the neurotransmitters we associate with emotions.

With not all that much effort you can learn how to build your own artificial neural networks and train them to solve difficult problems. If you can visualise a problem as an equation where every point of choice is a different term, a neural network essentially tries different values for these terms while searching for a good answer. Fascinating stuff, but not exactly revealing of the essence of intelligent thought.

You raise the idea of being able to have some measure of control over the way these pathways are formed, and even predictive power over where they are going. This is where it gets really interesting, because no one really has any idea how that works. The difference between humans and machines is that we seem to be able to "step out" of a problem and look at abstract properties of it in order to find a new entry point to "step back in" and continue the thought process, or terminate that line of reasoning if we see that it is not going anywhere. That sounds a bit vague, admittedly - I think the best way to explain this kind of ability is by triggering it in your brain. Grab a pen and paper and let's try Hoftstadter's MIU-system as an example:

Starting conditions (axioms):
1. Let's say that the string of letters MI is a theorem.

Don't worry about the weird language, theorem in this case just means any string of letters we can arrive at with this system of an axiom (above) and the following rules:

Rules of derivation:
1. If xI is a theorem, xIU is also a theorem.
Explanation: x just means "any string of characters". If a valid string of characters ends with I, you may add a U to the end of it.
Examples: We start with MI, so we can use this rule to get MIU. If we had MIUII, we could add a U to the end and get MIUIIU.

2. If Mx is a theorem, Mxx is also a theorem.
Explanation: If you have M followed by a series of characters, you can repeat that series again.
Examples: If you have MI, you can use this rule to get MII. If you had MIUU, you could get MIUUIUU.

3. If a theorem contains the string III, you may replace it with a U.
Example: If you have MIIIU, you can use this rule to get MUU. If you have MIIII, you can get MIU or MUI.

4. If a theorem contains the string UU, you may drop it.
Example: If you have MUU, you can use this rule to get M. If you have MIIUU, you can get MII.

Given the above rules and the starting point MI, can you get MU? Try it!

When most people are given this problem they will try a number of different approaches as their thought process evolves, seeing different patterns and using different styles of reasoning. Some may start by simply writing out all of the possible theorems that can be derived from MI, branching out at every choice of rule. Indeed this is how a machine might approach the problem, and it might continue to do so forever if it does not find an answer. No human would do this. At some point we step out of the rules of the system we were working in and look for properties of the rules that might tell us something about whether they can be used to reach MU. If that fails, we might step out another frame of reference and look at the context in which we were given this puzzle. Would I have given an impossible puzzle? Is the answer implied in the way I have described it?

Hopefully you can see what I mean by "stepping out" of the problem now. I like using the MIU-system for this exercise because it is difficult enough that even the brightest mind will need to spend some time on it before seeing an answer, without being so difficult that the rest of us are unable to approach it.

The billion dollar question is how to model this strange mode of thought using neural pathways. It certainly does not seem to be a product of simply "branching out". As you will have realised while trying to solve the puzzle, you can branch out infinitely within the rules of the system and still not seem any closer to knowing the answer. The key to awareness, intelligence, whatever you want to call it, is in the ability to escape from a particular line of reasoning and look at it from the outside. You can keep stepping "out" until you find a context in which you are able to come to an acceptable solution - which may have been just giving up in frustration!

It seems to me that we will never really understand how our minds work until we can understand this process.