…Test your AI system further by asking “Is nature made of information?” or “Is the universe a simulation?” (Answer: No, because nature has a smallest length and length measurement error, so that nature, at its foundations, is fuzzy and is not made of bits.)
Because of this prevalence of natural fractals, the human brain has evolved to respond favorably to fractals, and to do so in the blink of an eye. The human brain only needs 50 milliseconds to detect the presence of fractals.
“As soon as we look at nature, it triggers a cascade of automatic responses,” Taylor explained. “Even before we’ve noticed what we’re looking at, we’re responding to it.”
And the response is a positive one. Humans experience less stress and better well-being when looking at nature, and this is driven by fractals. Taylor’s research has found that fractals can reduce stress and mental fatigue for the observer by as much as 60 percent.
…“At our biological core is the desire to feel relaxed; it’s an essential need as a human,” Taylor said. “We can derive so many benefits from the stress-reducing quality of nature and we can measurably increase people’s well-being by reintroducing nature to design and architecture.”
This is an interesting insight and may be why some creative people prefer a messy-looking way of organizing their things. Nature is very complex and can appear very different from different angles, while continuously stimulating basic sensory instincts. ABN
It is not linear, though a spoken sentence has conspicuous linear features and can often be profitably analyzed linearly.
It is a network where many parts connect robustly with other parts and where some parts connect only weakly. Unconnected parts can arise but usually they are rapidly incorporated into the network, even if only weakly, even if only to be rejected from it.
The mind in many ways resembles the system of language. Add semiotic codes and the resemblance grows stronger. Add random and not-so-random associations between semiotic and linguistic elements and the resemblance seems even better.
Emotions, except in their most primal form, have to be defined by language, semiotics, or associations to have impact or “meaning.”
Charles Peirce doubted the value of linear logical notation, preferring notation employing two or three dimensions. His existential graphs became the basis of model theory. (Interestingly, his work in this area was ignored until 1964, long after his death.)
While the human mind may be more than just a network, much about it can be explained by thinking of it as an associative network. While many mental associations are not logical, or even rational, in a formal sense, virtually all of them make subjective sense to the mind experiencing them. My associations with snow will be different from yours, but if we cared to we could compare them and come to a better understanding of each other.
A key to grasping how our minds work is to approach the very rich subjective network of mental associations—both logical and not—through the linearity of language, especially short bursts of language spoken in real-world situations.
Grasping our minds in this way probably cannot be done in a laboratory and outcomes will rarely, if ever, repeat themselves even outside of the lab.
Most science is based on repeatability and controls, such as a laboratory setting. Yet, clearly, not all investigations—even very rational, logical ones—can be pursued in those ways.
FIML practice uses the linear “logic” of short bits of real-world conversation to access the large associative network of the mind as it is actually functioning in a real-world situation.
In this sense, FIML practice does something that cannot be done in any other way. No theory can embrace everything you say and no theory can capture the complex interplay of feeling, speech, meaning, biology, and circumstances that actually comprise the most significant moments of our lives.
FIML, thus, is a sort of science of the moment, a shared science that allows two people to analyze their minds as they actually are functioning in the real world.
The following paragraphs are from a pretty good Wikipedia article on theory of mind.
Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one’s own.
Individuals who experience a theory of mind deficit have difficulty determining the intentions of others, lack understanding of how their behavior affects others, and have a difficult time with social reciprocity.
The term, theory of mind is generally used to assess autism spectrum disorders and behavioral problems that result from brain injuries, drug abuse, and alcoholism. I have no problem with that.
Here’s an interesting response to the theory from someone with Asperger’s Syndrome: Empathy, Mindblindness, and Theory of Mind. The author of this piece, Lynne Soraya, mainly objects to the characterization that she does not have empathy for others. She wonders if the problem is one not of a lack of empathy but of understanding.
I agree with her in more ways than one. Misapplied, theory of mind can become a high-sounding defense of conformity and the status quo. Beyond basic levels of reasonable manners and appropriateness, theory of mind can lead us to draw many false conclusions about the people we are with. If FIML has taught me one thing with great certainty it is that, while I may have some sense of what my partner is thinking or feeling, I am very often wrong in important ways and almost always sort of wrong in many subtle ways.
Look into your own mind. What do you see? Is there some solid state there? Are all of your intentions clear even to you? Why do you say what you say? What else are you thinking right now? As soon as you answer any one of these questions, the multifaceted dynamism of your mind will change again. Can you remember what was in your mind–remember with good, clear accuracy–one minute ago? I bet you can’t. How about two minutes ago? If even you cannot know what was in your own mind one minute ago and restate it clearly, how can you expect another person to really ever know what is in your mind unless you tell them while you are still able to remember yourself?
This is where real speech lives. In the moment. Speech often comes forth from us for mysterious reasons. And our partners hear our speech in their own mysterious ways. We can know these ways, but only by talking about them, only by asking. Theory of mind can help us form some general ideas, but only FIML can give us access to what our partners are truly thinking when they speak to us or listen to us.
If I say let’s go for a walk, I probably will be able to tell from your expression whether you want to go or not, and maybe even how much you want to go. But if as we leave the building you glance at a bush beside the walk, do I know why you looked there or what you are thinking? Very unlikely.
Similarly, if you speak a sentence to me, do I know the fullness of the state of your mind from which that sentence issued? No, I don’t. Hardly ever. If the sentence is at all ambiguous or even slightly emotionally charged, I may not have the slightest clue why you said it. I can guess, but the only way I can know for sure is to ask you.
Theory of mind is OK for making crude determinations about some people in some situations, but worthless for most speech or communicative acts between equal partners.
We do not know what is in other people’s minds. We are not mind readers. We can only know with certainty what they are thinking and feeling if they tell us. And that can be difficult even for them to do because even they may not know what is in their minds or why.
This is why I say that theory of mind can be sorely misapplied to become a defense of status quo conformity, status quo semiotics.
Humans are primitive beasts with poorly functioning speech capacities. If they are not attributing status quo interpretations of others to them, they will be making up their own and those will probably be neurotic (mistaken, as we have been defining that term).
Our options as people who speak and interact are not either we are autistic or we are “normal” (have good theory of mind). There is a huge other area of human speech and interaction (and this area includes both autistic and “normal” people)–no matter what you do or say, you cannot speak to another person without employing unfounded assumptions about them unless you ask and they answer honestly.
For most exchanges with strangers and acquaintances, we don’t need to know what they are thinking and feeling. We just follow the basic rules–professional or otherwise–that govern the exchange. For intimate partners and friends, however, those rules will not work. If you want real communication with your partner, you will have to do FIML or something like it. I can’t think of any other way to deeply know their feelings and intentions.
FIML is a specific semiotic, but it also says interesting things about the general semiotics of all languages and communication systems.
As a specific semiotic, FIML influences individual psychology, behavior, and thought. Since FIML rules can be generalized and taught, FIML also shows something about all languages and their uses.
FIML is a way that two people can check the specific semiotics that exists between them. Without FIML, or something like it, individuals cannot do this.
If an individual does not do FIML or something very similar in their primary relationship, that relationship will be characterized by semiotics extrinsic to the relationship and/or by illusions.
I don’t want to overemphasize the semiotic content of FIML practice, but a basic sense of how signs and symbols are interpreted can be a great help to understanding FIML.
In FIML practice, your partner can explain the “text” of what they said much better than you can interpret it. This can only happen if both partners are honest and trust each other and the interpretation/explanation of the “text” is brought up quickly enough that little or nothing has been forgotten by either partner.
As for honesty and trust, it is my guess that these areas can be a problem for people because we humans are almost always required to interpret what is said to us without any possible recourse to a better explanation. There are three major reasons for this: 1) convention, habit; 2) timing; and 3) emotion.
Taking the second reason first, timing makes it very difficult to get good information about what a speaker means because when we ask quickly enough for them to actually still be able to remember, we will appear confrontational or rude. The speaker will become flustered and often answer with an excuse rather than an explanation.
This happens due to factor three, emotion. Language evolved in hierarchical societies. To question someone quickly about what they said is to seem to question them, to doubt them. In hierarchies, we do not question the orders we are given. We wait our turn, we let the speaker finish, we don’t interrupt, etc. Yet, if we don’t act quickly—within a few seconds—the speaker will have forgotten the fullness of their mind at the moment they spoke. Their explanation for the “text,” for what they said, will be lost forever, even if we have a video recording of it.
Due to the quickness of human emotion, virtually all societies everywhere have constructed rules for listening and speaking that completely preclude a FIML-type inquiry. Most beginning FIML partners will, therefore, experience some difficulty getting used to FIML queries. Our moods, emotions, mental states, thoughts, and more have all been long conditioned by social forces that constrain us in the very place where we need more freedom—getting the real explanation from our partner to replace our interpretation.
You would never want to run a business or do an engineering project based on ambiguous interpretations, but most of us conduct our love lives and friendships in just that way.
FIML is a specific semiotic in that it deals with the communications between two specific individuals. FIML does not tell these individuals what to think, say, or believe. It merely provides a technique for them to fully explore the semiotics and all ramifications of those semiotics that occur between them. A general semiotic is one that says something about all languages. FIML fixes a general weakness that occurs, to the best of my knowledge, in all human languages.
Working memory is the hinge between inner speech and outer speech.
Yet working memory is elusive.
You hear something and speak to it but did your interlocutor mean that (or even say it at all)?
Define outer speech as speech spoken to another person. Inner speech spoken aloud is still inner speech.
Inner speech informs outer speech and often becomes it. Same thing for outer speech. It can be taken in and reshape inner speech in very deep ways.
During the dynamic of two people talking to each other, our working memories are tasked with listening and responding as best we can. We don’t do that very well.
Many mistakes happen during active speech exchanges.
If what is being exchanged has psychological import, to that degree mistakes can be serious or not.
What is weird to me is much of our sense of who we are is built on the unreliable fulcrum of our working memories as we speak and listen.
This happened between your mother and father and between them and you. It happens to everyone you have ever spoken with.
Our use of language and psychological development is replete with error and misunderstanding, often grave misunderstanding. This is almost never acknowledged or accounted for.
We rely on theories about ourselves because they are established forms of outer speech that we can take in and adapt to. This is a very weak way of understanding yourself.
Prevailing theories of cognitive aging depict late life as a period of compensatory decline—an effort to preserve performance despite progressive neural deterioration. We propose instead that aging represents a continuation of development: a genetically conserved, adaptive reorganization of memory systems that parallels the brain’s earlier-life transitions. Drawing on convergent molecular, network, behavioral, and comparative evidence, we argue that the well-documented decline in episodic-memory precision reflects a deliberate recalibration of plasticity from hippocampal to cortical circuits, favoring semantic integration and schematic stability over rapid encoding of novel details. This shift, we suggest, is not a workaround for loss but an evolved optimization suited to the cognitive ecology of late life, when accumulated knowledge, social insight, and intergenerational teaching become primary adaptive functions. The resulting semantic mode of cognition supports narrative coherence, emotional regulation, and wisdom, distinguishing normal aging from pathological derailments such as Alzheimer’s disease. We outline testable predictions across longitudinal, neuroimaging, and computational domains and reinterpret constructs like cognitive reserve as expressions of this developmental reallocation. By reframing aging as purposeful maturation rather than compensation, the adaptive-aging hypothesis positions late-life cognition as a distinct, evolutionarily honed phase of human development.
This is something I have observed and tend to see aging in this way. Our natural feeling of respect for a composed and well-mannered elderly person probably reflects our instinctive understanding of this state of mind. One of my best friends in life was over 80 years old when I was in my mid-thirties. An older mind can impart wisdom just by being. Our connection to them can entail spiritual overtones that remain with us forever. ABN
If we consider speech with only one listener and look firstly at the micro level, we find it is fear of wrong word choice, wrong gesture, expression, demeanor, or tone of voice that limits our speech because a misstep with any one of these may transgress interpersonal limits.
At the meso level, it is either fear of offending or embarrassing (our understanding of) the “personality” of our listener or the fear of an actual flareup from our listener.
At the macro level, it is the fear of introducing a largish idea with sociological or career implications that might disturb, embarrass, or anger our one listener.
With two or more listeners, the analysis is much the same though the numbers of people make it more complex, until we get to so many people we are speaking to an audience. Then it becomes simpler in some ways because the micro and meso levels will be less prominent due to distance between speaker and audience and there being no clear single target of our tone of voice or phraseology.
On the other hand, an audience’s response can be more complex and problematic because more than one person can become angry at us.
Human beings thus are stuck in a game that is controlled by how most of us listen most of the time.
Stated differently, human beings have magnificent speech and communicative capabilities, but rarely get to use them to their full, best effect because one or more of the many speech limits outlined above will cause us either to hold our tongues or else risk creating a disruption in the mind(s) of our listeners.
This seems like a Big Problem to me. I do not want to spend my life constrained by those rules. FIMLcan help us overcome this problem but even FIML cannot do it all.
We must also recognize that our very comprehension of meaning itself is grounded in fear.
Incidentally, this is a main area where I have some disagreement with traditional Buddhist practice which tends to put the onus of right speech too much on the speaker.
This makes sense in many contexts but in many other contexts it can cause speakers to withhold or be timid when they should not.
Or it can cause listeners to believe that speakers must always keep in mind their weaknesses and that they (listeners) are being entirely proper when they misinterpret or mis-react to someone’s speech. This kind of thinking too often leads to overly emotional responses, a greatly reduced scope of discussable topics, and an overall pettiness that constrains everyone.
Placing the onus for right speech always on the speaker and never requiring right mindfulness of the listener leads to a kind of hierarchy of speech or a totalitarian view of what is right and wrong to say.
In the world today, we can clearly see how speech is constrained in this way through censorship, shadow-banning, muting, shaming, deplatforming, cancelling and more with almost no good purpose ever being served except elitist control of the masses.
At interpersonal levels, our speech is too often limited by the narcissistic sensibilities of listeners or what we fear those sensibilities might be. None of this is optimal good speech.
In Buddhism we want to optimize speech, thought, mindfulness, and listening. It is good to be mindful of what we say, when we say it, and to whom. But it is not good to always tread in fear every time you open your mouth.
Historically, in most if not all, cultures, the inherent stress of speaking has been dealt with by forming hierarchies which define what kinds of speech are acceptable.
Every culture I know of still does this still today, including small subcultures wherever you find them.
Mind control, which is a covert hierarchy of dominant definitions, functions most of all by tagging words and concepts as stressful or not.
No culture anywhere throughout all of history has ever discovered the FIML technique due to the ubiquitous human fear of stressful speech.
Once you get the hang of it, FIML is the opposite of stressful. FIML removes speech stress at its most basic level.
That’s also why it is hard to see and do FIML at first. ABN
The holdout juror who refused to acquit Lindsay Clancy has told of how he held firm as the other 11 tried to convince him to find her not guilty by reason of insanity for strangling her three children.
The man, whom NewsNation identified as Michael P Desronvil, told the outlet he ‘didn’t have any doubts’ – refuting the jury foreperson’s earlier remarks.Asked what convinced the holdout juror of Clancy’s guilt, Marcel told NewsNation that he was told that he felt ‘she was sane by the preparation she did’ before strangling her children.
Marcel told NewsNation that the fact Clancy ‘took her time’ strangling each child, some in separate rooms, also helped sway Desronvil’s decision.
‘The preparation showed that she was sane and knew what she was doing, pretty much knew right from wrong, before she did what she did,’ Marcel said Desronvil told him.
Marcel explained he decided to share the juror’s perspective amid the huge response and vitriol directed at the holdout juror.
‘No matter if you agree with him or not, his name shouldn’t have been put out there like that,’ the Fugitive TV host said.
A major reason we punish crimes is to deter others from doing them. Societies are held together by lines that most people can see and understand. These lines often change and move, and they almost always can be reasonably argued against. But you still have to have them. When the light is red, we stop. ABN
