[unrev-II] Hyperscoping. It's the natural thing to do

From: Henry van Eyken (vaneyken@sympatico.ca)
Date: Sun Dec 17 2000 - 22:27:58 PST

  • Next message: Jack Park: "[unrev-II] Smart Transcoder"

    In his "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework," Doug
    describes how he used a set of notched note cards for organizing and
    fishing out those notes that were relevant to a particular issue of
    concern. See Section 3: A3d. Having used the system for some time, he
    had come to recognize a useful subordering: Specification,
    Organization, and Content.

    I seem to recognize a pattern here, a pattern that developed from the
    contemplating of dreams.

    Dreams (well, many of my own dreams, anyway) seem to be generated by
    emotional or arousal states (Honi soit qui mal y pense). Most dreams
    are humdrum, forgotten already by the time I wake up. Some are quite
    vivid and upon review have elements corresponding to some outstanding
    events of the previous day. The interesting thing is that these are
    not factual correspondences as much as they are correspondences of a
    type usually connected with a fair amount of emotion or attending or
    heightened perception.

    My sense of dreaming is that it is the right side of the brain
    collecting bits of facts (factuals, monads*, concept packets** - in
    short bits of information) associated with a previous strong arousal
    of similar type, and then organizes them (have them self-associate)
    into tiny stories that abruptly displace one another. In other words,
    arousals (emotions) are organizing agents, but, unless one is awake,
    agents with little regard for reality. (I have been able to identify
    another person's dreamed factuals with emotionally associated real
    factuals, and do so on a number of occasions without any difficulty
    whatsoever. Hence, I am confident about being correct here in
    principle.) Reality comes with the waking state which knits those
    factuals together so as to let us interpret our daily experiences to
    ourselves - to make sense of the events around us, i.e. to experience
    "reality," and in the process add to our store of factuals.

    It is known that very young children frequently dream of flying.
    Presumably their factuals are still rich (high fraction) in those they
    came into this world with and, hence, one may expect similarities in
    the dramatic content of dreams. That effect will dilute with growing
    up.

    Interesting is the brief period of disorganization during awakening.
    Opening one's eyes during the sleep-wake transition, one may ascribe a
    line to being the edge of a table, but after a brief moment one
    realizes it is actually part of a door frame. That seems to correspond
    to the half second or so of our nervous system's feedback time.
    Factuals get organized by, guess what, our natural propensity to
    bootstrap. (Ref. Gazzaniga, "The Mind's Past.")

    Now I should guess that it is fair to look at Doug's "Specification,
    Organization, and Content" as corresponding to natural aspects of
    mind. Content = factuals. Organization = waking state (when
    consistent), dream state (when flimsy). Specification = interest
    focus, which is strongly influenced by emotions. As for specification,
    consider primitive man. He must immediately react to sudden
    environmental threats and his "specification" must rapidly limit
    content to what's relevant (so as to avoid time lost in bootstrapping)
    and highten "organization" (i.e. attending, arousal). Specification, I
    suggest may be our natural hyperscope in a natural "three-layered
    structure" with a bunch of factuals (raw and chunked) as the bottom
    layer, the waking state or some emotional state attuned by some
    choleric as the middle layer

    Now go back to Jack Park's notes on chaos theory ("Use cases and
    ontologies"; last Thursday) with its components: Actors = factuals;
    relations = organization; state = specification (selecting object of
    our affection) or hyperscope.

    Why do I think this is important to contemplate? Because chances are
    that augmenting the human mind will work better if it is in step with
    the very way natural mind works anyway.

    We may just be on a very good track.

    Henry

    * monads, I seem to recall, is a term used for roving elements of
    thought in some late 19th century theory of psychology.

    ** "concept packets" is a term used by Doug.

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