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DevinMcDougallSecondPaper 7 - 29 Nov 2011 - Main.DevinMcDougall
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[READY FOR REVIEW] | | | I. Introduction | |
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< | The "network of pipes and switches" metaphor we have used to understand the internet in this class is also useful for understanding how brains work. At a high level of abstraction, a network can be understood a system where there are two basic categories of things, things that receive, process, and transmit information ("switches"), and things that serves a conduits along which information can flow ("pipes"). | >
> | The "network of pipes and switches" metaphor we have used to understand the internet in this class is also useful for understanding how brains work. At a high level of abstraction, a network can be understood a system where there are two basic categories of things, things that receive, process, and transmit information ("switches"), and things that serve as conduits along which information can flow ("pipes"). | | | To apply a consilient approach, the network model is useful for thinking about brains on two levels, personal psychology and social sociology. | | | Often in our culture the subconscious is depicted as an irrational "Heart of Darkness." It contributes to a sense of empowerment and agency, however, if we can think of it as subject to knowable regularities. | |
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< | If the brain is a network, we might be puzzled by the activity of its "invisible switches," but we keep in mind that with systematic observation, we can understand something of how they work and try to improve system performance (however defined). | >
> | If the brain is a network, we might be puzzled by the activity of its "invisible switches," but we can keep in mind that with systematic observation, we can understand something of how they work and try to improve system performance (however defined). | | | These knowable regularities might be thought of as emerging from the interaction of genes and experience (in the form of memories encoded in the brain). We might call that the source code of a person. Genes may be fixed (though their expression can be mediated by environmental factors), but memories can be added to or reinterpreted. If, in Larry Lessig's metaphor, software code is law, this psychological source code is also law. |
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