Scientific Model of the Brain - From Instinct to Reason: How does the mind work?

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Have you ever wondered how does the mind work?

 Believe it or not, here you will find out.

How does learning take place? How are ideas generated? How does reasoning come about? How does our sense of consciousness emerge? Why do we sometimes feel happy and some other times unhappy? Our mind is such a miraculous phenomenon, that it is only natural to believe it must be out of magic. However, in actuality, it is not impossible at all to conceive how conscious thought and reasoning may emerge out of the competition and cooperation among the billions of neurons in our brains. Indeed, we just need to consider the brain as the government of the organism: In the same way that the government of a society determines the policies the nation should take in order for the society to prosper, the brain processes external and internal information in order to elaborate plans of actions, for the achievement of the organism's goals. Then, with this parallelism in mind, in order to understand how the mind works, we just need to ask: How does our collective consciousness emerge and how do the nation's policies get generated from the competition and cooperation among millions of humans, each looking after his or her own interests?

Computational neuroscience is the scientific discipline studying how the brain processes external and internal information in order to elaborate plans of actions, for the achievement of the organism's goals. Computational neuroscientists' work is to build computer models of the brain: First we hypothesized the sort of computations being performed by a series of populations of neurons (neural networks) in the brain, then we implement such rules in a computer model, and finally run the model to test, whether it produces the same behaviors as what we observe in real life (i.e. the scientific method). In colloquial terms, we want to understand why we act the way we do. For instance, for my Ph.D. thesis (Learning Objects, Places and Relations in a Brain Model of Visual Navigation), I built a model of how the brain processes visual information to learn to navigate through an environment, in order to attain certain goals (e.g. food). Admittedly, however, these computational models generally focus on specific, basic tasks such as visual processing, memory, navigation, motor control, etc.. Probably because social behaviors involve multiple individuals, they seem too much of a complex question for a computational neuroscientists to take on. However, various circumstances in my life have led me to spend considerable time during the last years, studying a lot of History and State Formation. It was so that, rather accidentally, I came to realize that State Formation provides fascinating insight on how reason and conscious thought may emerge from the competition and cooperation among the billions of neurons in the brain. Indeed, do nations not behave like human beings? Does it not make sense to speak about a "collective consciousness"? Now, once I had a model of conscious thought and reason, I only needed to get to grips with the social animal's existential need of love, in order to be able to explain the circumstances, under which the individual will behave selflessly or selfishly.

In what follows, you will finally find out how does the mind work. If you have any question, please, do not hesitate to ask. If you find the model interesting, please, share it with other people, and, if you have any feedback - whether it is positive or negative - please leave a comment. 

Javier Bautista

Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience by the University of Southern California

Want to know more about me?: Check: When A Man Loves A Woman.

Why is it so critical to understand how the mind works?:

The study of the brain provides excellent insight on how to correct the gross dysfunctionalities of human societies, in that the brain constitutes a wonderful model of how populations of trillions of self-serving units may be able to come and work together in harmonious pursuit of everyone's benefit.

Given how the mind works, - as Ancient Athens' Direct Democracy and the Roman Republic's Representative Democracy shows - in a system like ours - where Mass-Media is all in the hands of big magnates and knowledge is controlled by the wealthy educated elite - inequality is bound to spiral out of control and lead the society to a systemic collapse. 

Any careful analysis of Nature reveals that a perfect equilibrium of competition an cooperation is the key for any complex system fitness and success. Clearly, if the various parts unite and cooperate towards a common goal, the system will be stronger. Yet, who or how is such goal going to be set? Evidently it is no good to pull in the same direction, if the goal is a bad one and all efforts are aimed towards a wrong target.

Thus, humanity works beautifully if there is a bit of inequality. A bit, just a bit, of inequality allows for leadership and brings some order to the society. However, as we see today, the society slowly becomes dangerously dysfunctional as inequality grows to the grotesque levels we observe now in our modern fake-democratic regimes. 

As the present scientific brain model shows, humans follow the guidance of those stronger, more knowledgeable or - all in all - more powerful individuals, who we feel care for us. It is logical: if he or she loves you and wants the best for you, it only makes sense to learn from those more knowledgeable relatives and friends, and follow their advice. The danger is, however, that it will not be long before those at the top will (consciously or unconsciously) learn, that they only have to express some love, in order to get their social lessers to do as they say. Have you noticed how these days people is constantly saying how much they love and care for you? Still, if the social betters made it to the top because of their own merits, it is not that much of a threat; after all his or her success speak for their better knowledge. However, as inequality grows and the society gets stratified, it will be most often the case that the social better's only merit is to have been born to a wealthy family. It is then rather unlikely that he or she will feel any true emotional attachment to his or her social lessers, with whom they have never really intermingled. We can so see that in our modern grotesquely unbalanced societies - even though the political leaders are democratically elected - the System's bedrock policies are completely aimed at serving the interests of the upper class: Indeed, contrary to any logic, the most wealthy are not prosecuted for skipping paying taxes, the courts systematically rule in favor of those litigants wealthy enough to hire a powerful attorney, the offsprings of the most wealthy families enjoy a decided advantage to join the leading schools, etc.. It is not that the upper-class dominated Media manipulates the people to vote those politicians, who favor the upper class, instead of those who go against it; but that every politician knows he or she will be dragged through the mud by the upper-class dominated Media, if he or she ever dares to defy the System's unjust bedrock policies. Since mass-Media owns the best information and always shows so much care for the people, the bulk of the society will trust its assessment of which policies are good for the nation and which are not. Furthermore, every journalist knows well that if he or she ever dares to express any opinion against the rights, freedoms and privileges alike of the upper class, there will not be many other opportunities to say anything more on the air. Likewise, if any judge ever dares to refuse to rule in accordance to what suits the System best, he or she knows well there will not be many other opportunities to call any more shots in the future. Long story short, in a grotesquely unbalanced society, those who benefit of the System impose the society's ideology and belief system; that is, the single right way of thinking, that everybody will soon follow.      

Yet, if the upper class enjoys all the advantages, it is mathematical that there will be even more inequality in the next generation and - needless to say - the bigger the inequality, the more difficult it is for the lower-class folks to rise and the easier it is for upper-class people to stay on top. Worst of all, in a grotesquely unbalanced society, neither the lower class folks think for themselves anymore - since it only makes sense to follow the guidance of those lovely and loving, most successful upper-class individuals, who know everything best -, nor do the upper-class people try anything new, since why would anyone want to rack his or her brain over anything, if you can just indulge yourself in the pleasures of life? Long story short, the way the mind works, inequality feeds itself and, as it grows, the functioning of the society gets ever worse.

 

It shows not only it is fake the care the social betters express for their social lessers, but they are not more intelligent either. The people at the upper strata of the society are clearly more concerned with maintaining their privileged status than the society's wellbeing, and do not have the brain to come to terms with the fact, that by moving Heaven and Earth to protect the inequality they so much benefit from, they are nothing but setting up all the conditions for everybody's demise. It is a blatant example of how we often refuse to recognize those alerts that go against our wishes. It is not that the collapse of empires is inevitable; but that the upper class will never want to do the things that need to be done, in order to avoid the empire's collapse.

Yes, the study of the brain provides excellent insight on how to correct the gross dysfunctionalities of human societies, in that the brain constitutes a wonderful model of how populations of trillions of self-serving units may be able to come and work together in harmonious pursuit of everyone's benefit. Hence, if it makes any sense to you, please, share the link with the people you care for.

A SCIENTIFIC MODEL OF THE BRAIN: FROM INSTINCT TO REASON

The main purpose of the brain is to optimize our interaction with our environment, in order to achieve the organism's ultimate objectives.

How the brain works in a nutshell:

The model does not follow the general belief that there is something magical in the brain, responsible for our prodigious human intelligence. Quite the opposite, the model employs the scientific method to explore what are the reasons and causes producing the kind of intelligent behaviors we observe: First hypothesize some causes and reasons for the data, then build a model implementing said hypotheses, and put them to the test. If the predictions are not confirmed, correct the model by redefining the hypothesised underlying reasons and run the test once again until a satisfactory match is achieved. Now, fascinatingly, these are the sheer principles of our mesmerizing reasoning ability. Indeed, let us consider what mental processes should have taken place when prehistoric humans found out how to make bread. It is certainly hard to believe that our nice, lofty bread came fully formed; but some brain power must have been involved before humans started using yeast to make bread. However, it just does not make any sense to think that some genius could have ever devise that, by adding yeast to the flour-and-water mixture, some air bubbles would form, thus causing the dough to rise. Rather, it certainly seems more realistic a scenario, where one day the bread somehow came out nice and lofty. The key question then became what caused, what was the reason why this time the end result was so fantastic: was it because there was more flour or more water in the mixture? perhaps, this time the oven temperature was higher or lower? Could it have been that the dough was left for a longer or shorter time in the oven?... Given that our nice and lofty bread had been so wonderful, it was only reasonable that all efforts were made to replicate the fantastic outcome, trying out, one by one, all sort of hypotheses, until it was finally discovered that, as it turned out, stupid Homer Simpson had left the wet flour to mold in the sun! Eureka!! Who could have guessed it? We did not need any intelligent-agent light bulb to go off after all. Brainless Homer Simpson was able to accomplish the exact same feat, by simply methodically putting, one by one, all sort of hypotheses to the test. In other words, reasoning - the most prodigious of human intellectual abilities - does not require any magic, but can be produced by simply applying a scheme along the lines of the scientific method. Now, if this hypothesis were not fascinating enough, neuroscientific research has firmly established that, as a matter of fact, the basic funtioning principle of the brain is to form a model of the world around us.      

Consequently, the present scientific model of the brain does not follow the usual assumption of the existence of a magical intelligent agent making choices and taking decisions. Rather, - much like the scientific method - the brain learns a model of how things associate with one another, how things work, in order to be able to make an educated guess of what actions will attain the organism's objectives. At all times, all sorts of courses of action are unconsciously being weighted and competing against one another. Whichever alternative wins this competition becomes the organism's choice; albeit, on a "deeper, more prolonged thought", another course of action may eventually offer better prospects and prompt a "change of mind".

Now, obviously, there is not always a direct association between the current state and our goal; but a whole sequence of actions is required. We learn these tricks and recipes through trial-and- error or, most often, from someone else. In this way a whole encyclopedia of concepts is formed. Object-oriented programmers mimic this encyclopedia, when they design their libraries of classes and objects. Indeed, the classes and objects of an object-oriented programming language are the equivalent of our mind's concepts, and objects' methods find a parallel with all those tricks and recipes we learn to achieve our goals. Crucially, the definition of all our (conscious) concepts, as well as the associated tricks and recipes, are coded in natural language, so that - mightly enough - knowledge can seamlessly be shared among all members of the group. It can then be seen, that our natural language functions as a self-learning object-oriented programming language: we learned our encyclopedia of (conscious) concepts and recipes as we learned the language. Our sense of consciousness, our "train of thoughts", then results as our brain runs all these natural-language-coded programs. In summary, - in colloquial terms - our conscious thought is the result of the operation of some sort of computer inside our mind, running natural-language-coded tricks, recipes and programs alike. 

As the model points out, learning takes place, at the individual level, following reinforcement learning; whereas at the collective level Nature's survival-of-the-fittest' rule is the final judge on what is correct and what is not, or, more precisely, what works and what does not. Based on this, the model makes many significant predictions. One of the most consequential of these explains why complex human societies get over time increasingly dysfunctional, as inequality grows obscenely out of control: namely, since there is no intelligent agent capable of logically analyzing the correctness of the information we receive from other people; in order to learn, we rely and blindly follow the guidance of those stronger, more knowledgeable or - all in all - more powerful people, who we feel care for us. Consequently, those at the top of the society only need to fake some care for their social lessers, and we will foolishly follow them.   

 

In fact, probably most striking is the conclusion that it is our feelings which our really in charge. Indeed, we say and do the things that we have learned are most effective at satisfying our feelings. For instance, we need to feel loved, we desire to have other folks do as we wish, we need to have something to eat, we long to experience sexual pleasure, we desire to stay safe and healthy. Then, all what we say and do is based on what we believe will best fulfill all these goals. For example, if we constantly say to the people around us how much we love them; it is not because we actually love them That much; but because we hope to be loved and appreciated. Yet, this does not mean we are then lying everytime we say "I love you", since we are actually not conscious of the real (unconscious) motives. Obviously, this same reasoning explains why we always ask to everybody we meet: "how are you doing?" Moreover, women require men to passionately love them; thus, if women - especially young women - experience frequent bouts of anger is because, unconsciously, she is constantly testing to what extent the guy loves her, no matter how irrational she can get. On the other hand, men desperately need women to believe in them; thus, if men are always explaining how everything works, it is because, unconsciously, he needs to check, time and time again, to what extent she believes in him and therefore follows every bit of advice he gives her.

Now, if we feel confident there is a trick or recipe we know, that will satisfy our current need or desire, we will go ahead with it. Otherwise we explore by trial and error. The act of reasoning therefore corresponds to this research process, whereby our brain tries to find out what actions yield the best results to achieve a specific goal. In other words, - much like a cook - it is searching - by trial and error - for a trick or recipe to solve a task. To the extent that nowadays in most cases we just follow a trick or recipe we have learned from someone else, it is easy to see why it is often not that clear we are as much the kind of rational animal as we like to think we are. Rather, - not unlike little children learn from their parents - we just follow the guidance of those stronger, most knowledgeable or - all in all - more powerful people, who we feel care for us.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: How the brain works in a nutshell.

Chapter I - Intelligence is not a magical light bulb inside our brain; rather the brain learns plans of action for the achievement of the organism's goals.

CHAPTER II - What features carry the most significant information on the things out there, in order to solve the relevant tasks to achieve our goals?

CHAPTER III - Concepts and conscious (natural-language coded) knowledge: (conscious) concepts are the stereotypes we form to use as sequences-of-actions- building blocks, so that it becomes feasible to elaborate complex plans for the achievement of our goals.

CHAPTER IV - How do concepts form?: The scientific method and how does the brain investigate how the world works..

CHAPTER V - How our conceptual framework slowly developed throughout Evolution?: We learned concepts as we learned the language and - as we learned the language - conscious thought slowly developed and became more elaborate.

CHAPTER VI - Elaborating complex plans with the concepts of our conscious knowledge Encyclopedia, that we reasoned out from our unconscious wisdom associations: Who could have guessed it?, the scientific method is inspired in the brain's basic learning method, in general, and reasoning ability, in particular!

CHAPTER VII - The word running the mind, and how we began losing it.

CHAPTER VIII - Humanity functions as a giant macroscopic brain: How does the sense of - collective or individual - consciousness emerge?

CHAPTER IX - Ethos, cultures and ideologies: How did our collective brain learned throughout Evolution how the Universe works.

CHAPTER X - The Ideology has taken on a life of its own: Those who benefit of the System impose the single right way of thinking upon everybody and, with that, the countdown is set up for the day the Revolution will start eating Its children.

CHAPTER XI state formation provides some fascinating insight on how populations of trillions of self-serving neurons competing against and cooperating with one another may naturally lead to the emergence of complex (intelligent) conducts, whereby the organism's wellbeing and standing in the world is advanced.

CHAPTER XII - Let us think of the society's educated elite as the conscious knowledge and thought of a human being, in order to get a better understanding of how does our sense of consciousness emerge, what is our conscious thought really about and how our brain's conscious knowledge complements our brain's unconscious wisdom.

CHAPTER XIII - How can we use the insights on how the brain works to correct the gross dysfunctionalities of human societies.

DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS

* The main purpose of the brain is to optimize our interaction with our environment, in order to achieve the organism's ultimate objectives

Introduction: How the brain works in a nutshell.

Chapter I - Intelligence is not a magical light bulb inside our brain; rather the brain learns plans of action for the achievement of the organism's goals.

* For instance, recognition is not accomplished by an intelligent agent analyzing the description of the environment generated by our senses.

* Action-oriented perception: our senses collect the information about perceptual stimuli, which our brain learns is relevant to perform the organism's actions.

* If our ultimate objectives are to stay alive and be happy; how do we accomplish these two contradicting desires simultaneously? 

* Does the frog's brain have an intelligent agent responsible for choosing which of two flies to snack at, or is it just neurons competing for which of the two flies to snap at?

* Choices are made by means of competition between groups of neurons.

CHAPTER II - What features carry the most significant information on the things out there, in order to solve the relevant tasks to achieve our goals?

* How do we select an alphabet of features, with which to code descriptions of the things in this world?

* The optimal approach is to learn a hierarchy of increasingly complex features: for instance, let us combine letters into syllables, to build words, with which we can write descriptions of the things in this world.

* We become more sensitive - learn a richer alphabet of feature detectors - for those patterns we experience the most.

* The brain develops a model of the world, describing in more detail those patterns which are more common and more relevant to our goals.

CHAPTER III - Concepts and conscious (natural-language coded) knowledge: (conscious) concepts are the stereotypes we form to use as sequences-of-actions- building blocks, so that it becomes feasible to elaborate complex plans for the achievement of our goals.

* Unsupervised learning is followd to learn low-level feature detectors of those patterns, which we find more frequently and most faithfully describe the environment; whereas supervised learning is followed to learn those high-level features, which are better suited to code the tasks we execute to achieve our goals.

* Supervised learning: let us assign a name and create a specification of complex features for those scenarios most significant for the attainment of our goals.

* Since the brain's aim is to understand how things work, the meaning of a 'thing' is determined, not by how it looks or feels; but by how it relates to our goals and other 'things'.

* Those things, which we find are significantly related to the achievement of our goals, get a name and become concepts.

* If there is anything such as intelligence, it is the brain's ability to develop an accurate model of how things work, which will in turn guide the pursuit of our goals.

* Of all our knowledge and wisdom, our conscious knowledge is only the small part, which we are able to spell out with words.

* Our reasoning ability is not the crest of our intellect. In fact, we do not consciously carry out those many fundamental tasks, for which we are not able to write down an explanation, that anybody could use to resolve them. Yet, crucially, it is most definitely true, that our (reason's) ability to spell out with words a certain piece of knowledge is utterly powerful, since then it becomes possible to transmit such information to other people.

* The myth of Reason: Why are there left-handed folks and right-handed folks, and how there can be reasons for choices without any previous reasoning, or how prodigiously intelligent "choices" are possible in the absence of any reasoning. Long story short, the "intellegence" of an action or conduct is determined by the degree to which the system becomes fitter and so more likely to prevail.

* Our conscious knowledge is where we code in natural language, everything we have learned about the world, that we are able to spell out with words.

* What is the essential role played by our instinct - the unconscious levels of our brain - in the resolution of those tasks, that our conscious thought takes on? 

** If we do not know how to solve a task; we go by trial and error. If the attempt is successful, we take note of it, so that next time we know how to obtain the same positive outcome. However, if the attempt fails, we likewise take note, so that next time we do not repeat the same mistake.

** The unconscious learning of associations between patterns and the acquisition of conscious knowledge go hand in hand and are nothing but interlaced components of the same learning process.

* Since it is not feasible to learn direct associations between any arbitrary goal and any arbitrary initial state, it became advantageous to evolved some kind of neural planning mechanism.

* The reasoning and planning process followed by a chess player can be conceived as the continuous elaboration of a plan to achieve victory in an argument against an opposing side.

* Yet, a chess player does not select the next movement based on an idea, that has magically popped up; but after exhaustively researching as many as possible promising combinations. 

* In order to simplify the elaboration of plans of action for the achievement of certain goals, those patterns that behave in significantly similar ways are grouped in a single concept. For instance, we will not develop separate concepts for male chicks and female chicks, so long we do not need to resolve any task, where male chicks and female chicks follow distinct patterns of behavior. 

CHAPTER IV - How do concepts form?: The scientific method and how does the brain investigate how the world works.

* Finally, we arrive to the one million question: how does a (conscious) concept form?  

* The answer according to which a concept is formed when our brain's intelligent agent has an aha moment and becomes aware of it, not only is not scientific, but is nothing but pure magical thinking and, therefore, most absolutely useless.

* The fact that most inventions evolved in fits and starts constitutes evidence, that they were not the result of a series of aha moments; but the pattern can be better explained by a trial-and-error model (of the kind followed by a beginner chess player). 

* The scientific method seeks to capture in a simple model the essence of how the investigated system works, so that testable predictions on the system's behavior can be made. 

* The brain's non-logical probabilistic modeling yields more information on how the real world works than purely drawing logical inferences.

* Whereas philosophizing about things only produces respectable opinions; the scientific method - not unlike the brain - yields testable predictions, that we can then use to optimize our interaction with the world around us. 

* Since it is strictly impossible to prove the inexistence of something, the mere hypothesis of the existence of a 'thing' does not add anything to our knowledge, but only leads to a meaningless sophistry contest.

* A definition of 'what' a thing is will only be of any use, to the extent that it provides some indication of how the thing works.

* Neither the countless number of positive examples, the flaws of opposing theories, the authors' reputations nor the number of followers, - unless a definition specifies how the thing works - there is no principled objective method to determine the correctness of a definition.

* The fitness of a scientific theory is determined by its simplicity and predictive power.

* If a scientific theory's prediction 

fails, the theory can conclusively be deemed proven wrong.

* The myth of Science and "scientifically proven" facts: Since it is impossible to prove that something will always be correct, it is not possible to prove the absolute correctness of a scientific theory, nor is there anything such as a "scientifically proven" fact. 

* The simpler a theory, the stronger it will be: namely, a very complex theory, which defines a specific case to explain every new observation, - as accurate as it is - will not have any predictive power and will therefore be of no use.

* a theory that explains everything through the assumption of the existence of a intelligent agent inside our brain, not only has no scientific value, but is nothing but magical thinking.

CHAPTER V - How our conceptual framework slowly developed throughout Evolution?: We learned concepts as we learned the language and - as we learned the language - conscious thought slowly developed and became more elaborate.

* Given we can observe everywhere in Nature, how stable patterns of miraculously spectacular complexity and beauty form from very basic dynamics, we need not to resort on any magical intelligent decision-making agent to explain the rise of a sense of self-awareness and the expression of rational thinking and intelligent behaviors.  

* The scientific method is especially well-suited for impossibly complex, inscrutable problems, since it never requires a perfect answer, but allows to make progress in uninvolved and unassuming baby steps: How could anybody doubt the power of the scientific method, if - as we shall see - it is inspired in the brain's basic learning method.  

* Human societies are and excellent example of how populations of self-minded units competing against and cooperating with one another (much like the neurons in the animal brain) do not require the intervention of a global intelligent agent, in order to evolve a sense of collective identity and self-awareness, as well as to lead to the emergence of all sort of global feelings and the expression of incredibly sophisticated ideas and intelligent conducts.

* We already know how the neurons in the frog's brain might be able to intelligently select one among many alternative complex actions. A cold, lifeless artificial-intelligence algorithm is likewise able to elaborate a complex plan of action to achieve victory in a (simple) chess game. . If only we could understand how do we form ourselves concepts of things; we would have all the components needed to build a neural model, where countless populations of neurons employ some abstract knowledge to achieve some goal far ahead into the future.

* If there are no concepts, there is altogether nothing to be conscious about. For instance, how may anyone be able to write a cooking recipe, if he does not have any concept of the ingredients or techniques employed?  

* In fact, we get the great majority of our concepts from someone else's explanation. But, if that is the case, how did those folks acquire those concepts in the first place?

* A baby's cry for help: our first aha moment and how it gives rise to our most basic concept.

* From the very beginning, we have been learning concepts, as we have been learning the language.

* Learning nouns and the acquisition of the most basic concepts: The first step to acquire a concept is to find out the thing's name, and there is no simpler method to indicate which thing we are thinking about and referring to than to point at the thing in question.

* Learning verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions; learning what things are good for: The simplest method to learn what things are good for and how to accomplish things is to have somebody show us how to resolve the task in question.

* As we learn more and more words, as we find out how to refer to things and actions, as we acquire more and more (conscious) concepts, we become able to spell out, write down, save and transmit natural language scripts, of what things are good for and how to accomplish stuff.

CHAPTER VI - Elaborating complex plans with the concepts of our conscious knowledge Encyclopedia, that we reasoned out from our unconscious wisdom associations: Who could have guessed it?, the scientific method is inspired in the brain's basic learning method, in general, and reasoning ability, in particular!

* As much as most frequently we follow someone else's recipe to accomplish what we want, sometimes we also (voluntarily or involuntarily) try something different and figure out stuff on our own.

* We most often find out new stuff, when we come across an unexpected or striking event. If it constitutes a positive experience, we will want to be able to repeat it; whereas we will want to avoid it in the future, if it was a negative experience. In any case, how do we mentally trace back our steps, and come to (consciously) learn what exact sequence of events led to such a relevant outcome?

* Little by little we develop som intuition of what is the cause of the striking event, until we finally put the hypothesis to a test. If it gets confirmed, it will enter our conscious knowledge.

* Conscious concepts code in natural language information on things, that our brain's planning mechanism can then utilize to build sequences of actions for the achievement of our goals.

* A concept's name seems to work as the key of a database, or the index of an encyclopedia, indicating the page, where all our natural-language-coded information relative to said concept can be found. 

* the recognition of an external body delivers the key with which all the natural-language-coded knowledge on said thing gets activated and becomes accessible. 

* Our knowledge can be thought of as being made up of the instinctive wisdom - we accumulate over time from practical experience and is not directly accessible to our consciousness -, and our natural-language-coded encyclopedia - or the consciousness-accessible knowledge - we normally acquire through reasoning, other people's teachings and theoretical study -. 

* In fact, the observation that there is (unconscious) wisdom - which cannot be expressed with words - and conscious knowledge - which can be expressed with words - evidences that the purpose of our reason is to figure out recipes to achieve a certain goal, and our conscious thinking represents the execution of such sequences of actions. Indeed, to the extent that (natural-language-coded) concepts are the basic components of our brain's planning mechanism's sequences of actions, it will be impossible to elaborate a certain sequence of actions, if the pertinent concepts are not available. Or how do you plan to make an omelette, if you have no concept of what is an egg? 

* Consciousness will emerge as the brain extracts higher-level information on how things work and (as a form of lingua franca) a new general universal coding scheme develops, which can be generally applied to the execution of any task. Thus, we can similarly imagine conscious thinking, as the process followed by a true judge, as it goes through a legal codification system, in order to find the best way of action in response to a given situation.

* How complex plans can be elaborated without any intelligent decision-making agent? (i.e. how do ideas get generated?): The pursuit of any goal can be framed as a search for the optimal sequence of actions in a game tree. Once we have formed ourselves concepts of all relevant things, everything gets stereotyped and the dimension and complexity of the problem is so very much reduced. Since - for the purpose of planning - the brain disregards the insignificant peculiarities among different instances of each concept, it is realistic to formulate a plan for a real-life problem (e.g. fighting a dialectic or physical battle, driving a system to a certain desired state, or simply finding a route from Point A to Point B) as a simple chess game. Then, since the assumption is made, that there are no significant differences among pawns, knights, bishops... the number of possible combinations to explore becomes manageable. Moreover, if we follow the (unconscious) intuition we have develop out of practice on the specific problem, we will minimize wasting energies researching unpromising combinations.

* Since genetic algorithms (such as Nature's survival of the fittest) are guaranteed to converge to the global optimum (if given sufficient time); the brain is guaranteed to evolve an optimum reasoning and planning mechanism, within the existing conceptual and physical constraints. 

     * The exact shape of the brain's planning mechanism is constrained by the nature of the application (the mechanism has to be able to generate a plan to accomplish any goal in any kind of problem) and the brain's own physical constraints (it has to be implementable in a massively parallel and distributed neural architecture). 

* Since our (natural-language coded) plans of action are in this fashion generated after exploring all reasonable combinations; we no longer need the invocation of any magic, in order to explain our miraculous ability to spell out our reasonings: why did we do this, why did we not do that, what was wrong about this, what was right about that...

CHAPTER VII - The word running the mind, and how we began losing it.

* There is a reason why the brain evolved a reasoning and planning mechanism: The ability to express with words a causality link between an initial state and a desirable goal constitutes a formidable evolutionary advantage.

* However, if our conceptual framework of how things work happens to be misguided, our reasonings will grow exponentially non-sensical.

  

* As Humanity's knowledge has grown more and more and the resulting neverending exarcerbation of social hierarchical orders has led to an educated elite to little by little tighten up its grip on the most advanced and powerful knowledge, our global concept of how things work has become more and more biased, corrupt and dangerously toxic.  

* Since humans will only listen and follow the guidance of those stronger, more knowledgeable or simply more powerful people, who we believe care for us, as soon as a group of families rise above all others in the society, we are naturally inclined to fall under the spell of such an elite and follow its very particular and biased account of how things work: namely, the upper class belongs at the top of the society because they obviously are the most intelligent and finest people, and, therefore, the rest better worships them and does as they say.

* If it were not bad enough that we have no better choice than to follow the educated elite's teachings on the most complex subjects; little by little we are likewise absorbing more and more the upper class' toxic doctrine on even the most conventional stuff; troublingly enough, our conscious (so-called rational) thinking is slowly taking over our unconscious (irrational) wisdom.  

* The biggest threat in today's dangerously toxically unbalanced societies is that our greatest virtue - namely, our ability to learn how the world works and transmit the knowledge to the other members of the community - turns out to be the ultimate cause of even further inequality.

* There is a good case to be made, that the key to our success is language and the power it confers to spread out knowledge: we no longer need a rocket scientist each time we necessitate to re-invent the wheel.

* Inequality is turning the key to our success into the cause of our demise: since we are always so eager to blindly believe and helplessly fall for other people's insincere expressions of affection; the more inequality, the more dangerously vulnerable we become to our social better's toxic teaching and manipulation.

* Humans have not become any more intelligent than in the past; but it is only that humankind's knowledge has grown to stupefying levels. While we know about far more things than our primitive ancestors, our understanding of the most fundamental stuff has degenerated perilously.    

* The richer and more accurate one's conceptual framework in the problem at hand, as well as the more exhaustive the search conducted, the better the ideas one will come up with. Consequently, as a matter of fact, our primitive ancestors' intellectual abilities and efforts deserve all the credit for the formidable knowledge currently at our disposal.  

* In fact, since our ancestors already pretty much figured out everything for us, barely ever do we today think by ourselves anymore.

CHAPTER VIII - Humanity functions as a giant macroscopic brain: How does the sense of - collective or individual - consciousness emerge?

* In the past - much unlike today -, humans lived at subsistence levels and the competition among groups was as fierce as unforgiving. One mistake and you were out; those groups who did not come up with the strongest innovations and most efficient practices were simply wiped out by those who did. In stark contrast, today we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. 

* As it turns out, those groups who hit upon a good balance between competition and cooperation came up with the strongest fit to how things work. 

* Cooperation was boosted as language supercharged the dissemination of knowledge. THe development of a full-fledge language and an ever richer conceptual framework of how things work were two sides of the same coin. A virtuous circle was thus established, as a richer conceptual framework led to a more sophisticated language, which in turn empowered more individuals to perform a more educated exploration for new findings, with which our collective conceptual framework of how things work was further enhanced. 

* To the extent that our ability to figure things out is the capital reason of our success, it is useful to view humanity as the most powerful of all (learning) computing systems: Not unlike the neurons in the brain, we form a massively parallel and distributed processing network. Not unlike the neurons in the brain, we compete against and cooperate with one another, as we look for the best recipes to accomplish our goals. Natural language is the coding scheme that the brain uses to code concepts and sequences of actions, and humans employ to share recipes. Finally, reinforcement learning are the dynamics the brain and human societies will (ideally) follow to reward, respectively, those neurons and those humans who come up with the ideas and recipes which work best for the whole.     

* Indeed, humanity functions as a giant macroscopic brain. Our investigation of the Universe proceeds according to the brain's massively parallel and distributed processing paradigm, and our ideas about the world are likewise subject to the brain's reinforcement learning rule. We can then use this stunning analogy to get some very good insights on how the brain's most fascinating phenomena come about. As a matter of fact, if humanity functions as a brain of self-minded brains (as opposed to a brain of self-minded neurons) we can follow the same reasoning to achieve a much better understanding of humanity itself and the gross dysfunctionality of today's human society.

* If we can think of the society's collective consciousness as the synthesis of the individual consciousnesses of all of its members; then by considering what exactly represents said society's collective consciousness, what does it entail and how it develops, we can get some very good and fascinating insight on what leads to the emergence of our own sense of (individual) consciousness. For instance, what led to the emergence of the US national ideology and sense of national identity?

* Consciousness requires - at a minimum - the objective of continuing one's existence. Or, what is the point of consciousness, if there is nothing to be conscious about?

CHAPTER IX - Ethos, cultures and ideologies: How did our collective brain learned throughout Evolution how the Universe works.

* Living beings can be understood as knowledge on how to survive and prevail. The core of this knowledge system is the species' genetic code, where the specie's masterplan is defined. Obviously, a crucial component of this masterplan is the brain. Based on the grand strategy coded in the species' DNA, the individual organism will develop a brain, where the dynamics the species' DNA has optimized throughout Evolution will be followed, in order to optimize the individual organism's interaction with its environment: namely, what basic needs will have to be satisfied, what basic goals should be pursued, how will learning be carried out, etc..

* Our genetic code sets the dynamics which will naturally lead the individual's brain to converge into the optimal patterns of interaction with its environment. It is certainly not by chance or sheer genius that all babies learn (equally well) how to walk, how to recognize objects, how to speak, etc. Now, while the dynamics are optimized from one generation to the next, by means of Evolution's genetic algorithm; the brain's knowledge on how to interact with the environment is transmitted from one generation to the next by means of language.

* Incredibly sophisticated - even miraculously perfect and beautiful - patterns can be observed everywhere in Nature. For instance, humans and parasitic pathogens learn optimal complex strategies (such as the optimal patterns of exploitation and leeching off, respectively, sedentary communities and hosts) by means of the same kind of Evolution's genetic algorithm, rather than thanks to some light bulbs' genius aha moments.  

* It is not at all straightforward for a self-minded organism to realize that a mutually-beneficial relationship (such as, for example, domestication) is the optimal long-term strategy of interaction with the other living beings in the environment.

* A self-minded organism - following, one step at a time, a learning process based on local information, will never find this kind of win-win happy-medium compromise, but will eventually get stuck in a local minimum. Instead, a global-search optimization process (such as Evolution's genetic algorithm) is necessary: a population of individuals try all sorts of possible things. With time, those strategies yielding greater success becom more popular, whereas less successful ones will go out of fashion, if not die off altogether. Eventually, if sufficient time is allowed, all but a few outsiders will follow optimal strategies.   

* Contrary to magical-thinking apostles' belief, scientific evolutionary theories are not necessarily deterministic, deny free will or exclude the possible existence of a divine creator. Rather, all systems are free to make any kind of choices; it is only that those who pursue bad strategies are likely to die off sooner or later.

* While microscopic (brainless) species have been able to evolve remarkably intelligent behaviors, by means of evolutionarily-optimized dynamics; the evolution of the brain opened the door to the implementation of the kind of far richer dynamics, that in turn lead to the emergence of miraculously sophisticated behaviors.   

* Love, let us work together and do what is best in the long run; love, let us work together and live forever happy!

* Ideologies: Let us group together behind the loving Shepherd who shall lead us to the greenest pastures.

* This world is too chaotic, that it is impossible to anticipate where on Earth our butterfly wing's flap is going to cause the next tornado. Rather, we investigate our world by trial and error: those who realize what are the right buttons to push will flourish; whereas those who repeat the same mistakes will die off. Indeed, our conceptual framework and understanding of the world evolves according to the same evolutionary optimization process we observe for species' DNAs.

* Until the rise of Civilization, our ideas and ways of thinking, doing things and interacting with the environment were shaped by our community's ethos, culture and ancestral traditions. Not unlike how it would play out in an evolutionary optimization process, we inherited the mentality, that naturally led to the modes of subsistance, strategies and ways of interacting with the environment, which had worked since ancestral times. Indeed, we do not go by the ideas and explanations, which our brain's intelligent agent finds more logical or reasonable. Rather - at least until the rise of Civilization - humans followed the ideas, views, conducts and practices their loving ancestors had taught to them. 

* The rise of the system ideology: It used to be that the entire community share the same knowledge and understanding of the world. However, as human discovery turned our knowledge of the world ever more advanced and complex, information became the most valuable asset of all. Indeed, as an elite of families started keeping for themselves exclusive control over knowledge, the most advanced information became the most powerful tool to gain control and dominate the illiterate masses. In the new civilized societies, since the educated elite is most knowledgeable, it is only natural that they will lecture everybody else on the new system's ideology; that is their own account of how things work, the correct and right way of thinking and how stuff needs to be done. You see, I know everything best; so it is better for you, if you follow my guidance and do as I say. 

* Human beings do not go by what our brain's intelligent agent finds most logical, reasonable or sound; but, sensibly enough, by whatever we are taught by the stronger, more knowledgeable or simply more powerful persons, who we believe care for us

* If, after gazillions of years of evolution, Nature found the freaking critical happy medium between competition and cooperation; do you not think you are so smart to fix it.

* Worshipping the supremely intelligent agent, who is going to fix Nature's perfect designs.

* how did we figure out how do the most complex things work (i.e. animal and plant domestication, prescribed burning, state formation, etc.?). Was it someone's light bulb going off or did the community's knowledge, wisdom and ways of thinking progressively consolidate all the little cues and findings we gathered from trial and error throughout Evolution?

CHAPTER X - The Ideology has taken on a life of its own: Those who benefit of the System impose the single right way of thinking upon everybody and, with that, the countdown is set up for the day the Revolution will start eating Its children.

* Given the way things work, where are things heading?

* The Ideology has taken on a life of its own and - much like regular cells to the organism it belongs to - humans have become slaves to it.

* What is our intelligent agent's choice?, true democracy or is our current fake-Democracy spawn as far as the most privileged and gifted brain light bulbs among us are able to think up?

CHAPTER XI state formation provides some fascinating insight on how populations of trillions of self-serving neurons competing against and cooperating with one another may naturally lead to the emergence of complex (intelligent) conducts, whereby the organism's wellbeing and standing in the world is advanced.

CHAPTER XII - Let us think of the society's educated elite as the conscious knowledge and thought of a human being, in order to get a better understanding of how does our sense of consciousness emerge, what is our conscious thought really about and how our brain's conscious knowledge complements our brain's unconscious wisdom.

CHAPTER XIII - How can we use the insights on how the brain works to correct the gross dysfunctionalities of human societies.