Micro-impulses, the pattern-to-action links and absent-mindedness

In my recent speech at Mensa I talked about these three topics, but I don't think I have had the opportunity to mention them here in writing as well.

Let's begin with the second one: the pattern-to-action links.
The easy way of describing this is saying it is very similar to the action-reaction concept. In physics you have a reaction for every action. In the brain you may have an action for a specific pattern that you identify; meaning that whenever you see a specific set of patterns, you immediate try to act in a specific way, without trying to think about it and analyze it.
Well, it's not exactly that simple, but I wanted you to get the "cause-and-effect" concept of it. Action => Reaction. Pattern => Action.
This is possible in the human brain if:

• the pattern is in-context
• the link from the pattern to the action mesh has been created in the past via the DP mechanisms

You  need both prerequisites for it to work. It has to exist (ii) and it has to be as expected (i). In other words, you must have done this action in the past: the first time a DP was created, it stole some battery power, you tried some actions, you found one suitable, you got feedback, the neurons were strengthened and a weak link from the pattern to the action mesh was forged. The next time, the out-of-context experience was less, the DP smaller, the action easier, but still the extra feedback made the link even stronger. Thus, in time you build links from patterns to specific areas in the action mesh, that serve as purpose to propel yourself from identifying the pattern directly to acting on it in a specific way, that you know from past experiences that was useful to you (this was proven by the fact that you got feedback).
But the pattern has to be very similar to what you're used to seeing when you learned to react in this way. If all other external stimuli from the environment are different, then the "combined traversal" of them into your brain won't be the same and the signals will end up in different areas of the brain, and thus they won't reach this P-A link, and the action won't be performed.
It's like asking you to play bowling with a bolleyball. It might still be possible to somewhat play, but the weight of it in your hand feels different and the way you have to throw it is different, thus you can't just pick it up and perform the same moves as you're used to. This situation is out-of-context and the P-A links that you have already built from your previous bowling experiences are only partially useful. You have to build new P-A links in this new context!
If you're following thus far and know the rest of my theory as well, then you probably already understood that this pattern-to-action links are the instruments upon which the Helix mechanism (the ex snail mechanism, I have renamed it :) is created; it would not be possible to have a choreography of consecutive moves that one causes the other, if you didn't have P-A links for each one.
So now the Helix can be described as follows: you get some external stimuli, if they are in-context and you have P-A links in place, no DP is created, you perform a spontaneous action, which alters the environment (outer loop) but also alters your expectations of what will come next (of what will be in-context). If the new external stimuli continue to be in-context and you have P-A links for this, you do another action, and so on and so forth.
This choreography of spontaneous actions that come naturally to you and you don't even realize/remember them is the Helix, and it is composed of the P-A links, the inner&outer loop and the Selector.

Now that we have this in place, we can describe the micro-impulses as well.
This mechanism actually generalizes the concept of Driving Pockets and gives a better explanation as to how we can perform difficult actions or new actions by combining the previous "kinetic" knowledge of our brain. Actually this topic would be very helpful in robotics and neural networks, I suppose.
To explain the micro-impulses, you have to take one thing that I'll tell you as a fact: when the brain decides to make a move, it does not know beforehand exactly how it will do it. It gives a general order, a vague "description" of how it wants to move and makes it more specific along the way. How does it do it? It's very simple! It has an idea of what it wants to perform (by "projecting" the outcome through the inner loop into the pattern mesh). It observes the effects of its abstract command for action on the environment and the external stimuli that it now gets (through the outer loop) and spots minor differences that will create small DPs (or large, if we don't know at all how to do it, or very small if we have done this many, many times in the past). These small DPs, steal a small amount of the battery power and in the known way try to fix this out-of-context thing by adjusting the details of the action. In other words, they create micro-impulses; minor muscular adjustments to the original kinda vague movement order.
Since these micro-impulses are done by small DPs, the current available to the battery for other, big DPs is enough and this does not disrupt our regular processing ability, unless while trying to perform something ordinary we spot something extra-ordinary (out-of-context) that is important (relates with a DF) and thus deserve our specific attention.
If this is not the case, all regular/usual actions are handled by a combination of Helix, the P-A links and micro-impulses to perform minor adjustments to our movements.


Finally, if you want to have a kind of proof for the fact that our brain "orders" abstract moves and adjusts them along the way, you can think of this:
what happens when we hear a loud noise, while performing an action. If this let's say sounds dangerous and we get alarmed, a big DP gets formed, steals all battery signal and our movement gets disrupted. But we don't stop moving instantly! We continue for maybe about a second or so more. And this last second of movement is not very precise (because we have lost focus and we don't continue to make adjustments with micro-impulses). So there you have it: the fact that we continue to do a general movement is kind of proof for the fact that the brain gives abstract move commands and the fact that this move is not precise when we lose all battery power (that gets stolen by the big DP), is proof that we need microDPs to do micro-impulses and make our moves precise.

Moving on to the third one, we will describe why we act in an absent-minded way sometimes (we needed the first two to understand this better).
If we are focused on something that is important (i.e. we have a big DP that steals almost all current of the battery), then we don't have a lot of battery power left for the micro-impulses. This means that something that is quite in-context (but not 100%) will create a movement via the P-A links, but this movement won't be adjusted by the micro-impulses (because all the battery power is stolen by our big DP) and thus our movement will be done only approximately correct, or "muzzy", blurry (στο περίπου in Greek).
And by another example we can understand how this also translates to the thought process as well, because (I'm tired of saying it again and again) actions and thoughts are the same thing for the brain in terms of mechanisms. When we are performing an action that is very out-of-context, but is important (and thus we have a big DP that steals all battery current) we cannot think of something at the same time. We are focused on our action. It is not necessary to have to do difficult and abstract/advance thoughts to perform this action. No, this effect happens even when we just do a difficult action without using our thinking process too much. So it's not like we're using our capacity for abstract thoughts in another way; no it is not used at all. Nevertheless, we cannot use it because we don't have battery power, and if something asks us a question, we might reply with a very generic/vague/simplistic answer, just because we didn't have the battery power to think of something better/more-elaborate to answer. In other words, when we're focused in an action, our thinking process and our answers are muzzy/indistinct/inaccurate/non-elaborated, exactly as our actions are muzzy when we're thinking. Q.E.D.

The meaning of existence is the progression of organizational complexity

When I took about organizational complexity I'm not talking specifically about human organizations and people constructs. I'm talking about mechanisms that are able to cope with the complexity of the universe and adapt to it; so in essence understand it. A perfect mechanism for this is indeed the human brain. But it is not the only one, and I certainly can't tell if it's the best one. Corporations and other people associations are also suitable for this description. They too have a drive to understand the environment they exist in and adapt to it in the best possible way to survive.
You see, although the meaning of being is to increase the organizational complexity of some constructs of the universe, these "constructs" don't actually know that their purpose of being is that. They are tricked by their "driving forces" into doing things that they fancy and in essence promote their complexity as an underlying goal. So people have bodily needs and to better serve them they need to understand and adapt to their environment (to be able to feed themselves for easily, for example). But by doing this, they increase their complexity of their own mind. Corporations have a "need" for better profits, so to achieve this they come up with better products, improved processes, better technologies, better offers, etc. These functions are more elaborate and thus more complex. So by trying to fulfill their needs, they are forced/tricked into increasing their complexity. This is a vicious circle that drives life/being into higher levels of complexity as years/millenia go by.
That's why I love the law of requisite variety (I haven't actually read it from the source, I'm using the interpretation as presented by our OB professor Dionysiou). It more or less encompasses the meaning of life! The universe is vast and complex. But it has a superb groundwork (the natural laws etc) that allows for constructs inside it to become more evolved/elaborate/complex as time progresses. So from the birth of the universe, let's say some billion of years ago (...although I don't believe in the Big Bang, I like Mayer's theory much more) till now and on to the future, the complexity inside the universe is gradually increased. The pinnacle of this ongoing effort is the human brain as well as the layers above it (e.g. I consider societies a layer above the human brain). This is the meaning of existence.
It doesn't have to be nice, it doesn't have to be understandable. We're not even supposed to be able to see a meaning, a master plan behind it. It is too complex for us to fully comprehend it. We can just realize this tendency and "go along" as it is the only certainty in life (even bigger than death!).

Btw, death is also a tool of this complexity progression tendency of the universe. E.g. the human society benefits by death, because the knowledge of all the good branches remain (it is written in book, taught in schools, passed from generation to generation) whereas all the bad branches is lost into oblivion. The universe has no law, no instrument to judge which "branch" is better for the purpose of increasing complexity, so it lets all branches grow and clips them at the end (by death), so that the crops from the good remain within the construct and others can built upon them. In other words, death is an instrument of the natural tendency of the universe for increased complexity.

So this is it. This is the meaning of existence. Caution, I'm not talking about the meaning of life. The meaning of life is very well known to me (and is answered by my Theory). It is the maximization of pleasure (and minimization of displeasure). But the meaning of life is only the "trick" the universe has imposed upon us (living beings) to fulfill its greater purpose of increasing organizational complexity.

We can't understand what's behind it. It's like trying to describe quantum physics to an ant. But this ant, as well as all other similar constructs in the universe, is striving to increase its own complexity to be able to fill the complexity of the whole universe in its own "mind".

Why giving yourself a massage or a tickle is much less effective!

Well, the idea is really simple: you expect it to happen, because you have decided that you will do it.

And I don't mean it a general action; I'm referring to every little move of your fingers. The current that begins from the driving pocket (let's say that you remembered the sensation of your last week's massage by your spouse and decide to do it to yourself. That's a driving pocket!) and travels to the action endpoints (to order your fingers to move) also goes through the inner loop and back to the pattern matching mesh part of your brain. This means that through the inner loop you "preview" or (prefeel) what the sense of your own touch will feel fractions of a millisecond later.
And this is exactly the problem. Since you have touched yourself a lot of times in the past, you know the sensation of your own skin, you also know how to control your fingers and how to touch your skin... this has the effect that the current that goes through the inner loop and back to the PM mesh is directed very accurately to the areas that the external stimuli will also arrive as a consequence of your actions.
And as we've said (we haven't actually, because I keep postponing explaining in detail what the DIFF mechanism does), our brain constantly does a differential "at the door", so that it negates any signals that it already expects. In other words, any signal that through the inner loop is "expected" to arrive at the PM mesh via the external stimuli will be reduced in power (or completely negated) the more we have accurately predicted it (seen it coming). This is a continuous process by the human brain that cannot be turned off. It has the effect of removing "redundant" information from all incoming signals ("been there, done that" stuff) and allows only out-of-context signals to pass into the brain and get processed.

It's like a secretary for a celebrity: it throws to the garbage all omg-I-totally-love-you fan letters that keep coming by the hundreds every day and only allows important letters that are out-of-context (e.g. a letter from the IRS :).

Why being megalomaniac is a good thing (sometimes) - And the mechanism of repression

One should usually admit such things publicly, but I want to make a point relative to my theory, so here it is:

When you're reaching out for a goal too large for an ordinary human to accomplish, having thoughts of grandeur actually helps you keep on target! I often catch myself thinking about the "after". What will happen after I complete my theory; how I'll try to get it published, the methods of explaining it to the mass, how I can also make a profit out of such extraordinary knowledge, etc. Another human might quickly try to dismiss such thoughts or even try to discipline himself into avoiding them, as they lack humility and modesty and character. But when you're reaching for the stars... you actually need such thoughts, they are invaluable into keeping your Driving Pockets active for a long time.

Remember what we've already said: thinking is living (on a smaller scale/level, i.e. it is not as intense as actually experiencing them in flesh and blood, but the mechanism is the same, just turned down some notches). So when you think about some probable future stimuli that have the potential to give you pleasure, the DPs will be activated (but not as much). Nevertheless, this activation is a promise for pleasure.

Let's take a step back and explain the "repressed" feelings (I really DON'T like this translation. The greek "Απωθημένο" is much better) and how they get created.

What have we said about feedback? You get feedback (=strengthening of all currently active neural connections) in two cases: when the DPs get activated (feedback in the pattern-matching mesh), or when they get deactivated (feedback in the action mesh). So when you get a good scare about something, you will strengthen the path between this pattern and the DF of pain (fear is the promise of pain). The next time you see this pattern, the paths are stronger so the signal loss traversing it will be less and the DP will be even bigger!
On the other hand, when you eat something you really like, the active neural paths in the inner loop will be linked to this pattern (feedback in the action/inner-loop mesh) and the next time you try to eat it, you will "expect" it, so it will be more in-context and the DIFF mechanism (we haven't discussed about that yet, have we?) will subtract the predicted signal from the real signal and less of the original signal will enter the inner paths of your brain, and thus you will get less pleasure!

So you repress your feelings by having a promise for pleasure (activation of DP; pattern-mesh feedback) that does not have the chance to get fulfilled (i.e. to act on this DP and deactivate it, so you get action-mesh-feedback). In this way, sooner or later you see a person that exhibits excessive and rampant behavior (BIG DPs) when he sees something not that extreme. It is because he was getting a promise for pleasure (or pain!) that did not have the chance to get acted upon and become in-context. Time after time, the DP was getting larger and larger until it blows up :)


Let's get back to megalomania... Megalomania acts very much like repression in the aforementioned example. You get a boost in your DP that does not get fulfilled. The effect of this is that, although in many other people this DP would diminish too much too quickly ("this is a long-shot, I'll never have the opportunity to accomplish it") and they would move into acting on other DPs, in a megalomaniac this boost in the DP is enough to keep the promise alive! The fact that you "live" the potential (the what-can-be) in your thoughts is enough to keep you going, where others would have stopped ("Keep walking" :D).

The invention of time by man

The existence of time as a concept can be attributed to the gradual "deactivation" of the neural paths after a signal traversal and the gradual increase in resistance between two neurons.

In other words, the fact that as time goes by a connection between two neurons is more difficult to traverse for the next signal that might go that way means that a pattern that we experienced in the past will seem more "distant"/vague to us because the signal that will reach it will be less (greater resistance along the path). This also means that this pattern will agitate less the driving forces and create smaller driving pockets, marking it as a lesser priority for the brain.

So a pattern that gave me pleasure some time ago has "lost" a lot of its connection to the driving force, so if I see it again the activation of the DF will be small, so it will not promise me immediate pleasure. By this mechanism the brain prioritizes pleasure alternatives according to their... temporal proximity!!

And this is done automatically, without us reasoning about what is time. We don't have to think about it. We know what time is, as every pattern gets automatically translated to a distant or near pleasure. This way we "feel" what time is, and that's the way we are then able to reason about it and invent it as a concept.




As you may have guessed, I do not believe it "time". I believe it is an extremely useful human invention that helps us understand and model the universe.

Some tidbits about emotions....

I know that many will say that emotions have nothing to do with my theory and I should leave them out... They reside in a different hemisphere in the brain (or at least that's what I've heard House say :) and have nothing to do with reasoning and abstract thoughts.
I don't know, they may be right. I'm also not really interested in explaining emotions (although the fact that they are still there means that evolution has left then intact for a reason, so they might hold value) but I have made a remark that I would like to share. Emotion can be (partially) explained by this mechanism:

When the Selector notices something that is out-of-context, i.e. very different from what we expected/know then it reinforces these signals to be able to cross deeper into our neural paths and agitate the Driving Forces to create Driving Pockets (standard theory up until now). If the current from this or these DPs has nowhere to go towards the action endpoints to solve this thing, then the Capacity of the Battery is somehow enlarged, somewhat like a defense mechanism of our organism. Since with the current capacity of the battery (a specific amount of Amps it can give to the DPs) our brain is unable to resolve this out-of-context situation, our brain pushes harder! It tries to give out more signal, just in case this extra signal is enough to forge though the unknown pathways into something known and resolve this ambiguity/out-of-contextness :)

I can explain anger very well with the aforementioned mechanism...

You want to unscrew a cap from your soda bottle. You've done this many times, you know the amount of strength needed, so when you get the DP for a soda, you let your Snail mechanism guide you through this action... you don't even notice it / register it / remember it, if it goes as planned. But if the cap won't unscrew with the usual force applied to it, then... you have something out of context! The selector with enforce this signal, so it will create a greater DP. The DP will now "steal" more signal from the Battery and thus it will be able to send more signal towards the action endpoints and flex your muscles more. But if this damn cap still won't go off, you have a situation as described above: an out-of-context situation where your brain is not able to resolve it and deactivate the DP. So, if the cap still won't come off, you become angry!! The capacity of the Battery is magically increased for a short amount of time and you are able to push even more signal towards the action endpoints and to the muscles. This might be enough to finally unscrew the damn thing ;)

The sideeffect of this capacity increase of the Battery is that it won't wear off instantaneously. It will need a few moments/minutes/hours (depends on the situation, on person and on biology, so not interested) to go back to normal, so if you get other DPs activated in the meantime, they will get more signal than they usual got, so your reactions will seem over-the-top, too-much, or... driven-by-anger ;)
So if one asks you something when in the middle of unscrewing that cap, you might yell at him where in other cases you might not have.
When we are angry, we have reactions/actions with more signal that needed, which may be useful for the one DP that we are trying to resolve/deactivate, but is not useful for all others. Thus, our reactions are unmannered, our body movements are large and forceful, and all this because they are "fuelled" by a pumped-up Battery. This type of reactions is extremely common for angry people, and the fact that it can be explained via my mechanism is strong proof in my opinion that, out of all the emotions, anger can actually be modelled by this mechanism accurately.

-Other examples is like when you are driving on the road, on a one-way lane and there is someone in front of you who is driving on, let's say, 60% of your usual driving speed. This is out-of-context and will be strengthened by your Selector. If you also have a need to go somewhere quickly (i.e. if this strengthened signal that will now travel deeper into your brain will hit a DF hard), then a big DP will be activated. But since this is a one-way lane, you do not have the means to resolve this DP by a simple overtake.
The anger pattern is complete: you have something out-of-context that creates a sizable DP and you have no constructed pathways towards the action endpoints to do something and deactivate this DP... So, what do you do? You get angry!!

-Another example: someone you care for tells you something offensive about yourself. His offensive words are the out-of-context part, i.e. the signal that will be pushed deeper by your Selector. The fact that you care about this person means that you have communion (I really don't like this word, it's nowhere near the greek "ταύτιση" which is what I actually mean) with him, so you view him as an extension of yourself, so there are strong pathways that link him and you, so this deep traversal of your neurons will reach from the "him" part to the "you" part very easily, i.e. it will be like something that you have said to yourself, and you know that what you say is your representation of reality, i.e. to your knowledge it is true, so it will appear as very true to you! Now this is seriously out-of-context (you telling something bad about yourself) and it will activate a big DP, and the worst part is that you won't have the means to deactivate it! If you're not skilled at words to argue about it, or if you've never been told about it again, you won't have strong pathways from the DP to the action endpoints to resolve it, and you'll get angry... And since you act in an over-the-top manner with strong muscle movements and loud words (actually it's the same, strong muscle movements :), you may swear at him or even hit him...

That is also why little kids, who have many out-of-context situations and very few constructed paths from the DPs to the action endpoints tend to be very emotional... Because the pattern that I have described is very likely to happen.



On the other hand, grief and worry as emotions can be explained by the Battery reducing its capacity!
You cannot resolve this out-of-context situation and instead of strengthening your battery capacity, your brain reduces it! This means that there is less signal for everything, the DPs that get formed get less signal from the battery and push less signal towards the action endpoints, so the signal might not even make it to the end, or your actions might be weak. You need MORE motivation to get up and do something, you are not in the mood of acting as you normally would, all your thinking energy (this less battery capacity) is absorbed by this active (worrysome) DP that has no constructed pathways to resolve it, make it in-context, and all other DPs get almost no signal. Nothing can be acted upon when you're into so much grief. It needs time (the out-of-context will become in-context by itself over time), or counselling (forge pathways in the inner loop to connect this unfamiliar stimuli with other familiar contexts and thus make it expected and in-context) or getting force-fed by other pleasures (to create large DPs and steal a lot of battery signal from the other, woryying DP and get you out of this vicious circle), to make this effect go away.

(I know I haven't analyzed it as fully as the anger, but I've written too much for one blog post... I'm tired :)
Btw, tiredness can also be explained by reduced Battery capacity!! :D (ouf, I'm done talking :)

Explaining curiosity

As we have already said (have we? At least I've known it for over a year), the driving pockets "steal" energy (current, amperes?) from the Battery with an amount proportional to their relative amount of activation vs all the other currently active driving pockets. So two equally active DPs get 50-50 of the Battery's capacity.
The thing is that the battery does not really turn off (except in order to sleep, but then it probably fires off again when dreaming?), so even in circumstances where all our basic (& secondary & tertiary etc) needs are fulfilled and there are no active driving pockets,

(on a side note: it is very funny, but this is what we call happiness!! The non-existence of needs and the non-existence of stimuli that will trigger/remind-us-of needs! A situation where we have no will to do anything... Just lie peacefully still. And that is why nature has protected us and deprived us from the ability to achieve true, long-lasting happiness; because it is a condition that causes inaction and it counter-evolutionary and does not promote survival. And that is why we can also reach happiness for a few seconds at a time and soon enough something comes along and raises driving pockets again.
Sorry Buddha, evolution won't give in without a fight! :D)

the battery is still able to push signals towards the stimuli endpoints (and don't forget the inner loop!). This means that even a small DP, if left alone without competition, will capture the battery's signal and cause us to act in order to diminish it.
And this is curiosity! Even things that are not important, even when they are remotely relevant to something pleasurable from our past will cause us to act upon them, "if we have nothing better to do", i.e. if there are no bigger needs in our body to steal the current from the battery.

Simple, isn't it? Our mechanism that pushes us into action (and thinking), the battery, does not turn off, so when we have nothing better to do we put as much effort in the little things as we would put for the bigger things.


That is also one of the reasons why humans have developed so advanced thinking constructs, speech, writing, math, etc... (ok, one other reason is that they have to brain capacity to do it). It is because they have managed to easily solve their feeding and breeding issues and still have spare time.
So once they got past that point, the growth of our thinking process was exponential!
That is why philosophers were rich (or had other means of getting fed). That is why in the times of human history where survival was not given the progress of thought and science was minimal or non-existent.
And that is also why I need a relatively simple (repetitive, uninteresting) life in order to continue developing my theory... Because the driving pocket that drives me into thinking about it is fueled by a veeery distant promise of reward, and every pleasure potential of the "here and now" kind distracts me. If I had a life full of trips, ups-and-downs, pleasures etc, I would be able to devote thinking time to my small in activation DP of the cognition theory. And if I don't devote time, the theory is not going to be thought of by itself...

Anywayz, we started with curiosity and explained the golden age of Perikles, the advantages of slavery and my "prison".