A Model of the Mind: Part 1

A broad analysis of the structure of consciousness and how it manifests in our every day world.

As we’ve seen, there have been a ton of theories relating to the nature of consciousness recently, from IIT and now to data compression. And these theories are often backed up with correlative empirical data, to really give us some insight into how the theories relate to our every day experience of consciousness.

Related to this, we have discussed in other posts something called a conscious moment, which in terms of data compression is a bridge between the first-person information model and the incorporation of additional compressed information, specific information. A bridge from which, in some sense, consciousness emerges (or, at least, is able to fully manifest).

Now if we have a basis to believe that consciousness is the primary interface onto existence itself, even the determining factor in a multiverse, then it would make sense to really get to grips with the very nature of this process of data compression in all its different aspects, and perhaps try to understand how different experiences in our every day life relate to each of those aspects.

And that’s what I want to do in this article, so let’s delve into that in more depth. What might constitute this specific information?

I have mentioned before that this model includes some of what we’re expecting, but also includes gaps that it hopes will be filled, fenced off areas that it worries about losing, and an area reserved for the unknown - stuff it infers might be possible, based on its knowledge, but isn’t able, or definite enough, to evaluate.

But it also contains an aspect of curiosity, that is always looking for a rational explanation, at reducing phenomenon to constituent, “upwards” causes.

So for the sake of clarity, let’s enumerate these five aspects:

• Mystery

• Security

• Novelty

• Consistency

• Reduction

In terms of information theory, you could see this as reflecting the different aspects of data compression. Firstly, the patterns that constitute the basis for this compression will always be whatever concepts it is confronted with that are useful to you, that fill a perceived unmet need, what we call novelty.

Those patterns can be of two varieties: rational patterns or irrational patterns. By rational patterns, I mean patterns that can be explained in terms of constituent causes (also called “upwards causes”).

By irrational patterns, I am referring to phenomenon that meet a need but cannot be explained. These are less likely, because of our conditioning, but allow for far more flexibility in how our desires are met.

Security is protecting the patterns that are used the most, specifically from any kind of corruption that would make them less useful to you. Consistency is juxtaposing existing patterns against input data to find matches, which often translates into our ability to discard what does not fit. Mystery is the very willingness, necessity and risk of inputting sense data into the compressor - something that is always balanced with security, which is why it’s often associated with fear.

On closer analysis, we can see how our reality consists of different manifestations of these aspects, in varying and often conflicting degrees.

In some cases, other people in our lives reflect different manifestations of these characteristics: perhaps someone we rely on for their knowledge is actually a manifestation of reductionism - somehow who understands things. Perhaps that person who is strong and can fix things is a manifestation of security. Our home, our family - these can be manifestations of consistency and security. The people we work with can manifest growth and novelty.

But then there are the things we fear because we do not fully understand them. The boss at our company can be a manifestation of that mystery: a very powerful and capable man, but who knows what he will decide? He could fire everyone at any time.

And in actual fact this mystery should be manifest in everyone that we meet, for reasons that we'll go into in another article.

This is a superficial look, but it can show how our consciousness naturally seeks to balance each of these. And, in actual fact, the dynamics between us and those in our life reflect this well: how do we balance each of them? How do we give them each attention? Set limits?

When we are fielding all the possibilities available to us - the mystery - we search for patterns consistent with the patterns we already know, but that are novel at a high-level. We always have the ability to understand the phenomenon in terms of how it reduces, but doing this can also make it into something that simply doesn’t fit in to our pattern store - our memory - and is thus ignored.

It could be, though, that the pattern is not expanded into this reductionist view, and instead we evaluate it only as a high-level phenomenon. We then find that it matches a past phenomenon that also was never reduced - something we simply didn’t understand then, didn’t try to, and don’t understand now.

But because it’s a familiar pattern in itself, we then would be able to experience it and incorporate it into our conscious reality. Quite literally ignorance can be bliss.

So you can see how one aspect in particular has the potential to disrupt this balance - and that is reduction.

This reductive curiosity always asks the question “how did this come about?”, and it provides an answer that isn’t in terms of the phenomenon itself, but instead solely in terms of how it might be caused.

When the stock market plunges, news pundits are quick to provide an explanation: “Dow sell-off due to recession fears”. Of course they have no such certainty, because the Dow consists of millions of share holders performing trading activity for any number of reasons. The Dow is just an average of the activity in the biggest companies.

It could be that you experience the Dow plunging because your need for some kind of negative news, and you happened to tune into the business news and see the Dow index, and the branch of the multiverse that you happened to find yourself in is the one where something significant is happening: the Dow collapsing.

But you could instead look for efficient, material causes for the Dow collapsing. This would be the reductive, “upwards” cause. And the pundits even offer one to you: that people are worried about a recession. “That’s the reason!” they say.

And this is why it can be a problem. You see, if the case was actually your expectation of negative news (a kind of “manifestation”), but you instead believe people telling that it’s caused by people selling stock for fear of a recession - if you take that reason as being the absolute truth, then you may use that to cause other actions you take: you go and sell off your stock. You decide to put off buying a house, and so on. You start building your life on what you thought were causes but were actually synthesized by that curious part of your mind.

This is the problem with this reductionist aspect of consciousness: when it becomes more important to you than the other aspects. And it can have massive ramifications.

It also limits what you can experience, because you dismiss - literally put aside - phenomenon that you don’t think is possible because the causal conditions are not in place to allow it.

Interestingly, this is exactly the dynamic that is described in the Biblical telling of The Fall of Man: the choice we have to believe in having provided to us that we need, including protection, or to let knowledge be our guide for decisions. The latter betrays the source of misbalance in our consciousness that leads to an entirely different type of existence.

We can find a secondary reductive explanation for anything. The mind will always synthesize an explanation, as elaborate as is necessary to satisfy your curiosity.

Imaging you see two people who look similar. Why is this happening? Quite possibly because you had the previous person in your mind, and then your need for novelty was sufficient in creating a new person, but their look was taken from the previous pattern stored.

Let’s say that’s the actual reason - but then, of course, curiosity kicks in and you need a better explanation. So you enquire and they tell you that they’re Japanese, which turns out to be the same race as your other friend. You then wonder why that makes them look alike, and you look it up and get a grandiose explanation about genetics and how DNA works.

Curiosity is quite an amazing aspect of our mind, it works like a calculator: it pieces together the input it sees, and then picks out a mechanism to explain it. And then if you look at those mechanisms, it can find explanations for those also. It is like a fractal such as a Mandelbrot - the closer you look, the more detail it will create to explain how it appears, endlessly. For us, though, there is a limit to our knowledge - and this is why quantum physics, at a very close level where knowledge is fuzzy, reality becomes just as fuzzy.

The temptation to put knowledge before faith is everywhere. We have our own “tree of knowledge” with its forbidden fruit, sitting there at all times. In fact now it’s more available to us than ever: the Internet. At any time it’s as easy as anything to just find out what causes something. In fact new Artificial Intelligence tools like ChatGPT makes it even easier. The serpent is all-but-literally whispering in our ear day and night!

We can resist, though. If we don’t focus on needing explanations, then the other aspects, and faith, can take precedence in molding the path we take. If we balance this with faith in someone to provide for us everything that we need, a divine Father-figure, then it will happen and things should go our way. Just like Jesus commanded in Mark 11:24.

This may be a heterodox position to take, but we often simply don’t need to ask how, and mostly we really shouldn’t. The only knowledge we should seek should be knowledge that ends our thirst for unnecessary knowledge.

I’ll discuss the other aspects of our mind map in more detail in Part 2.