123 Human Thinking : My New Brain Level Explanation for Why Humans are Certain about Uncertain things

1. Not Point to point but a rapid flowing channel

This originates from an enlightenment I had on May 30th, when I realised nighttime dreams stories are constructed so rapidly that they are probably NOT constructed by moving from point to point across the minds web of ideas, but are rather moving between those points in a channel flow without pausing to check that is the correct direction.
- eg. for the word "table" they'll be a connections to the 2 different types of use for this word : point "table-furniture" and point "table-data" but for an accountant the free flow channel goes straight to "table-data"

How Error correction Is Supposed to Work

- The conventional idea is that the human mind is a web of ideas ideas/concepts connected with various strengths to each others and these bonds are reinforced from real world experiences. Now that should mean that if a connection turns out to be wrong then the bonds should be weakened and disassociated.

- My 'new' idea is that ideas/concepts are rather held in the mind as webs of story maps and it's like as if it's a landscape connected by various depths of water channels so that one idea flow automatically into another
e.g. bark → dog → "I'm going to get bitten" → "I must run away"
- Now connecting to the idea that "I'm been fooled, it's a friendly dog" is possible but kind of needs the mind to jump out of the main channel.

Now I propose that to move fast and deal with enormous amounts of data the mind has built in assumption that A leads to B leads to C but if it detects an error it backtracks.* But actually in reality being stuck in the channel flow it often doesn't even do that, so that even if the dog has been proven to be friendly you still run away
- Note that this is all at a SUBCONSCIOUS level so the consciosness will not be aware of this process. Indeed just like the "brain time" illusions that Robert Burton mentions about hitting a tennis ball, it may make decisions and give you a false back story. i.e built in self deception that stops us being aware of the error.

How that causes failure in error correction

My central idea is that ideally the mind would burnt in the pathways the "correct way" via self correcting against the real world BUT there is a problem since humans are not only checking against the real world but also VIRTUAL worlds of the dreams and the media it can become out of kilter with reality.

BURNING IN What should happen is that when you get in real situations, the "connection channels" should get corrected if wrong and more burnt in if the prediction is correct. However if I keep feeding you a narrative through propaganda or misinformation it is entirely possible that untrue information could get burnt in But "I know I use logic" but for things like hitting a tennis ball , it is known that the brain has a built in self deception process, their is just not enough time but for your brain to gather all the information and make a decision. Rather it follows an inbuilt map and then feeds (that was POINT 2 - error correction fails)

- Perhaps mind structure has a way of assigning danger/caution factors ie obviously with the dog example the fail-safe option is to stay in the channel, whereas in walking across a minefield it's best not to "channel think" and check your facts at each step.

it probably does that at a subconsciously levels, with built in self deception that stops us being aware of the error.
- 6 Note that is a brain level explanation and there will also be other biases at lower external levels like what newspaper you read or friends you have.

anotherversion

- I think this process whereby we jump from a proven story straight into unproven stories is something to do with the mind works at a neurological level. See how your night-time dreams are constructed so rapidly moving from meme to meme, that's a sign of those memes being connected by deep automatic channels flowing like a stream. Rather than stopping at each node to check the directions, they FLOW ON and then backtrack when an error is found, but the flow is so strong that backtracking is hard to do.

Last night on R4 I heard a poem saying the same thing
"Because there is a consensus there is a temptation to follow a path without thinking"

* The Calf-Path - Poem by Sam Walter Foss *
One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.

...
And from that day, o’er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made;
....
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A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.

But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!

Ah! many things this tale might teach --
But I am not ordained to preach.

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