https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_IntelligenceA NECESSARY BOOK, CONTAINING NECESSARY MODELS FOR ADVANCED THOUGHT ABOUT THE HUMAN MIND
(for my advanced followers)
0) some of my followers are now far enough along in their development that they are making the common errors of rationalist philosophers, by overextending the rationalist method instead of extending their knowledge. It is easy to fall into this trap – primarily because it is cheaper to work with and deduce from your prior investments in your methods of framing questions (context) than it is to research new frameworks that you must adjust your thinking to.
1) as some of you know, I came to philosophy through artificial intelligence – once I understood that at the time, the technology was not capable of producing a solution without consuming enough energy to reduce the surface of the planet to cinders by its waste heat so to speak. It is this operational inquiry into intelligence that has helped me avoid falling into the traps of rational philosophers – because ‘meaning’ is not enough, without existential correspondence.
2) In every era, people use by analogy, the current model of technological complexity, to describe mental phenomenon that they cannot introspectively (or even mechanically) speak of otherwise. In the current era, we use computing as that model – and this is an advancement over prior eras. But people do not ‘compute’ in the same sense computers do because we cannot retain (remember) discreet values – the cost would be too high for our life form. Instead we ‘calculate’ (which is very different from compute) what we call ‘categories’: sets of constant relations that reduce the complexity of the passage of time and consistency or change in state of the universe, into what we call objects or ideas that we can compare, contrast, forecast, and decide upon.
3) Our brains accomplish this feat through rapidly finding layers of constant relations (Patterns) and filtering those ‘symbols’ (abstractions) to the next higher layer, where they are associated with other symbols of similar abstraction. In doing so we ‘activate’ networks of related cells at every level, and then recursively refine this process forming a sort of echo, where each fraction of a second we make use of the prior fractions – as much as three or four seconds of those stimuli. And that is just the beginning of the process. Our brains use similarities and differences to ‘generalize’ very small constant relations into very large constant relations, and then to increasingly create a model of those relations across time. And we can also create comparisons by composing more than one such idea at the same time. And while very simple people can only compare an idea with emotions, some people ideas with other ideas, and some of us if we train ourselves train ourselves to think of four or five, that appears to be the limit of our ability before we start constructing patterns of from them and no longer are tracking different concepts. etc. etc. etc.
4) I am always thinking of and expressing human mental processes in this still abstract but operational description of human cognition – a model that I think needs very little further granularity to explain the process of intelligence and thinking sufficiently to explain the need for via negativa tests of testimonial truth. And so, because of this operational model, I do not make the mistakes of the rationalists and confuse meaning with existence. In other words, to regress into mere rationalism from science. And I would like this distinction to remain what separates my work and the use of my work by others, from prior eras of less mature philosophy.
5) So I feel I must shift gears a bit, and emphasize Hawkins’ (and later) work (he’s very accessible), in addition to jonathan haidt’s if for no other reason than to save myself the effort of saving followers, and my work from regression into mere ‘philosophy’ instead of the language by which we speak natural law of sovereign men.
Meaning has no necessary correspondence with truth. In fact, the record of history is quite clear, that the number of constant relations that correspond with reality is a very small set of general rules, and the meaning (falsehoods) that man constructs in order to produce decidability for himself in some context or other is very different from the meaning (truths) that man must construct for decidability REGARDLESS OF CONTEXT.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine
( Ramsey Mekdaschi would you please make sure this is in the library? I am pretty sure it is. )
( Bill Joslin, Joel Davis )
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-22 08:23:00 UTC