Status March, 2022

By Wayne Brown

 There have been a few changes over the last few weeks that are worth noting.

I have stopped listening to the morning "news". I don't need to know the daily body count. Instead, I hang out in someplace nice and read the morning papers - Flip Board, New York times, etc.

I have decided to let Ukraine take care of itself but I pop in to see my eagles while I have my morning coffee:




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I am more convinced than ever that we make progress in our ideas by searching for "essential analogies" (Surfaces and Essences). Thinking about "mind" is hard because there is nothing "LIKE" it. Yet we can spot bad analogies.

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I have reached a point where I enjoy "ordinary consciousness". That's basically mindfulness I suppose. While I think "Thousand Brains" (Hawkins) is ultimately wrong, I think the idea of examining ordinary experience is a good one. 

I find Second Life to be a powerful analogy to aid in thinking about what the brain is doing. I depart from Hawkins who imagines the process to involve thousands of neural columns. I think in terms of the pattern of firing, which depends on a specific combination of active synapses (not neurons), which means the number of patterns is effectively infinite (100 trillion factorial).  If this seems like a big number, check the number of molecules in a drop of water. For all intents and purposes, the number is infinite.

Thinking of this process in terms of discreet elements is like trying to understand the properties of water by studying the chemical properties of H2O. "Holographic" analogies may be more productive ("The Form Within" -  This is an issue of scale - the way each "problem" needs to be addressed at the appropriate level of complexity with its own rules that depend only slightly on the rules applicable at finer scales. So, for example, understanding electronics will not help much if you are trying to understand the impact of Social Media. See "Scale" Geoffry West.

Going back to the issue of consciousness, books that provide a tutorial on how neurons work (or computers!) are not going to be helpful unless they quickly segue into the issue of scale.

In any case, I have put aside "explanations" of experience to simply enjoy it. We all have a mind to take for a test drive every minute of every day.



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