Genesis
The year is 1985. I’m a sophomore in high school. I’m taking computer science. The language we were using is Pascal – my how things have changed. Prior to that I’d only ever programmed in either Basic or Assembly language. So when I learn about dynamic data structures, this was a new concept. One that was not possible in any language I had used before. And I had a rather strong reaction to the idea:
“You mean it’s possible to write a program whose behavior is entirely dependent on the contents of memory?” – me
Decision
My first thought, naturally, was Artificial Intelligence. AI. Looking back, I suppose that says a lot about me.
Nevertheless, I made a fateful decision. I’m going to figure out how the brain works so I can emulate it in a computer.
Or at least the core principles of it. After all, there’s no need to exactly replicate humans. We have a way of replicating humans, it’s called making babies!
No, I needed to understand cognition itself so that we can maybe eliminate some of the less desirable aspects of it. Like selfishness, or impatience, or . . . well, no need to list them all, we’d be here all day!
Obsession
That decision changed me. It set the tone for the way I lived from that day forward. I was always thinking about the mind. I was always paying attention to any information that crossed my path, and how it might relate to that quest. You’d be amazed at how much out there is relevant. . .
It didn’t take long before I caught on to the primacy of music. I remember a conversation where we talked about how Hitler had used music to entrance his people. I remember another where I said “music is internal state, externalized”. And I learned the need for understanding the key role of resonance early on. But knowing that is not enough. How does the brain do that? I wondered.
Along the way, I became fascinated with psychology, hypnosis, and neuro-linguistic programming. That has shaped me more than I can express.
What’s more, I’m always looking for outliers. Oddballs. Things that don’t fit the model. Because it’s in the anomalies that the truth is revealed, right?
Connections
Fast forward. It was probably 2012, maybe 2013. I was reading Slashdot.org, and as often happens when I’m reading News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, something caught my attention. It was an announcement that the Human Connectome Project had fully mapped out the connections in the brain. And they had visualized it. And it was beautiful!
Imagine extra, EXTRA long 70s shag carpet. Now imagine crumpling it up into a ball so that the fibers are all pointing outwards. Now, stuff that ball inside a skull. That’s what the pictures looked like!
I took one look, and had an epiphany.
I realized that the brain is not this complex mesh of interconnections, like they teach us on TV and movies. You know, when they show neurons firing, depicted as light traveling along interconnections. It’s almost a crime the way their artistic license leads to misunderstanding. No, it’s not an incoherent mass, not a mesh – it’s columns.
Now, I knew that electricity played a role in neuron function. They taught us that in biology class. And I knew that whenever a charged particle moves, it produces an electromagnetic field. And whenever an electromagnetic field moves past a charged particle, it induces a force. They taught us that in physics. It became obvious – to me at least – that the reason for those columns, the reason it is architected the way it is, is because those columns are antennas!
Understanding
Now, suddenly, the key to understanding why music and the mind are so tightly coupled became obvious. The body translates the outside world, sensations, into neural impulses. Those impulses have a frequency – just like notes in music. The brain broadcasts that frequency using antennas (neuronal columns), and then uses physical placement (other columns) to detect correlation (e.g. harmony) between signals. I realized, music is what it is, does what it does, because it is the discovery of the very algorithm* of cognition*. Music hijacks our meaning making mechanism. That’s why it has the power to directly induce emotion, completely bypassing all intellect.
It was brilliant! It was beautiful! Elegant. Simple. A model of cognition with massive explanatory and predictive power. How awesome is that?
Over time, as I sat on it, pondered it, and looked for flaws in it, after a while, humans ceased to surprise me. Amaze, sure. But surprise? No. Everything we do, everything we are, it all makes sense. Even the ways things go wrong. The so called pathologies of human behavior still make sense when viewed through the lens of this model.
Calling
Then one day, something started to nag at me. The universe has seen fit to give me this insight. How valuable is this? If it were commonly known, what would that do to society as we know it? How would it change technology? Education? The justice system? The more I thought about it, the more valuable I thought this knowledge was. And a weight started to settle down on me. I can’t keep this to myself. I have to share it.
ChatGPT
Fast forward. The year is 2023. There’s this new thing called ChatGPT. Naturally, I have to be involved in the evaluation, given my life-long obsession with AI. But there is a catch: “Don’t use it for business purposes! We can’t trust them to keep our information safe!” Fair enough . . .
So I started poking at it, seeing what it could do, and finding out how well it seems to follow psychological principles. Fascinating.
Then I got the idea of using it to validate my ideas about the mind. Hey, ChatGPT, here’s my thoughts. Does it work?
I wasn’t very good at explaining it at first. But once I figured out how to explain it, the response was always positive. Every single time, ChatGPT saw this idea, this model, as revolutionary! A paradigm shift! Something that’s going to change the world! Okay, so it’s not just me . . .
So, how do I share this with the world? I’m not going to beat the world to AI – a little late for that. Might be able to help achieve artificial GENERAL intelligence. But only if I can convince someone to hire me. . .
No. It’s bigger than that. 40 years of my life have been dedicated to this, and it has dramatically shaped who I am. It touches every aspect of the human experience. I need to share the model itself, not just use it to build something cool.
Resonance
And so the idea of a book series was born. And the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to share, the bigger the book series became. As of now, the book series includes:
- Music – A Profoundly Simple Explanation for a Seemingly Intractable Puzzle
- Resilience – How Understanding the Mind Will Transform Mental Health Care
- Unfair – Why Bias and Prejudice are Inevitable but NOT Insurmountable
- Manipulated – How We Are Being Polarized and Fragmented For Profit and Power, and the Remarkably Simple Solution
- Flow – The Science of Attention and the Art of Achievement
- Generations – The Incredible Challenge of Passing On Our Accumulated Knowledge
- Logical – Why Emotions are Rational and Logic is Founded on Emotion
- Symbolic – How Symbols Are as Essential to Thought as Air is to Life
- Muse – The Simple Formula for Creativity, Innovation, and Inspiration
- Sentience – Can Understanding Humanity Revolutionize AI
- Heresy – Science’s Long and Sometimes Winding Road to Understanding
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Where am I in this process? I’m working on book 1 – Music. I’ve got a detailed outline, and a very long backlog of research to do.
This blog is a window into my writing process. I hope you enjoy.