Human mind

The human mind is something which has fascinated me for a very long time for its seemingly infinite intricacies. To get a vague idea about its enormous complexity, we just need to look at the vast research that has gone into developing the theories in artificial intelligence. After decades of research, today's most advanced agents can't hope to accomplish in a million years what a human baby can do even before its born. There are many things that I want to cover on this topic and will coming back to it, however for now, here is one theory that I would like to propose that I think describes this machine well: The human mind functions the best and at its full potential when working independently. While this fundamentally remains true at all levels for the ultimate decision, for the penultimate decisions for highly complex activities, there may be an optimal number, two or three team members at best, where people collaborate, taking the collective IQ of the group higher than the sum total of IQs of individual members. Anything larger, and degeneration kicks in.

To explain, the more people there are in a team, the more inefficient is the decision making and thinking process, as a group can only take decisions which comply with the lowest common denominator of the group. We can thus say that larger the group is, lower is the IQ of the entity. No wonder start ups end up accomplishing so much and democracy is usually a kingdom of morons. Applying this theory in a larger context, I would like to think that the American model of democracy may be better than the British model. In the American model, at the end of the day, one person, the president, has to take the final call on all things significant, who knows he is answerable for his decisions. In Britain, where a group of ministers choose the prime minister, who knows he will be back in power only if his party wins next time, and as long as they do, he will remain the leader, has very little incentive to be a true leader and think about consequences. While electoral politics is complex and this may sound like an oversimplification of the democratic process, I would like to think that this is true for the make or break moments.

Clearly, the British model of democracy is not something the British invented. They merely adopted it. When democracy came into being, it was certainly a remarkable thought which allowed masses to break free from centuries of monarchies and allowed them to participate in and influence the state's decision making, which eventually gave birth to the most important concept of modern times - capitalism. Over time though, democracy has got boxed into becoming a collective decision making body with only the most popular decisions being taken which win votes. Look at the concept of welfare states for example, a disaster of gargantuan proportions. The proliferation of the current greek-roman-british democracy model, in the earlier years of modern civilization, made the world a better place but in recent decades has successfully manged to make it a far worse place than it ideally should have been. The model, with its heart in the right place, unfortunately didn't evolve and at the center of it was the group think and its below par decision making capability. Unfortunately, influenced by the British, many former colonies of the Empire will have to continue suffering from this for decades to come. On the other side, leader and true decision makers, who exert individual thinking as opposed to groupthink,  can create so much value when the moment of truth comes. That's how you get Jobs, Gates, Singapore and China. What was that song - "Go alone, you..."

Rectangle of life?

Recently I came across a book named "Are you ready to succeed". While the title is clearly cheesy, initial premise of the book looked interesting, so I went and found an extract of the book for a quick read. Am yet to read the full book, however, the initial premises on which the author expands seemed quite fascinating to me and I thought I should expand on these before they left my mind. 

Based on this limited reading, I picked up four key ideas in the book (interestingly, one of which I have been aware of before) and to me it seems like these form the four points of a quadrilateral within which life revolves. The four points/pillars are a) mental models  b) multiple realities c) mental chatter and d) witness

The central theme is (mind you, I have not read the book, hence am just connecting the dots based on my hunches) - life is a sequence of events. Imagine yourself as an unattached vacillating sub-atom, sitting on a string connecting a node called "mental models" and other node called "set of possible realities". The sub atom is the “witness” and is surrounded by a cloud called "mental chatter". 

Now, as events happen in the "realities" node, the sub-atom watches the outcome and takes a model from the "mental models" node and applies it to the event, which supplies “one possible interpretation” of the event and connects it to earlier events in our life and evokes emotions/responses in the sub-atom. In the process, the interpretation and the responses are sent back to the model node where the models are updated for future applications. 

So far, this seems like a logical automaton and can remains so as long as the sub-atom is simply acting as a witness to the events happening, using models to search for interpretation, but consciously knowing that models are "one way" to explain an event, but have their limitations and hence don’t offer “absolute truth”. 

More often than not though, the sub-atom is surrounded by a cloud called "mental chatter", which constantly throws its own interpretations to the events happening, sometimes questioning the mental model's capability, sometimes strongly emphasizing that the interpretation of the model is the whole truth and only truth.

How many times have we heard people say - "why me, why did this happen to me?" Or, that "I am unlucky". Or that "things don't work out for me ever". Well, they just witnessed an event, applied a mental model without knowing its limitations which told them that they always get shortchanged unfairly. An objective assessment would be "well, this event happened and based on my previous life, my mind is interpreting it in this way". The watching person can step aside, watch him/herself, interpreting that event and get amused, of course all of this is infinitely easier said than done. But imagine if you tried living this way, wouldn't life be infinitely simpler?  Imagine the bliss when at every point, you remember that your life is confined within a rectangle made of these four points. You can then elevate to such levels where you interpret events as just events, like watching a dance on the sidewalk, without any emotional implications, and then quickly move on the next event and the one thereafter. If one can do it, this will be a true acceptance of our infinitesimally small existence in the billions of years old cosmos. Question then, is really this - can you remember to see yourself as a mere atom all the time?

Objectives

Often, one goes wandering on a chain on thoughts which don't belong in the immediate surrounding. The meandering of mind, in that process, in the world of unknown questions and answers, is like a beautiful journey, an escape from the utterly insignificant daily hubris. I have often been on such sojourns, wandering, analyzing, hypotheticating about possibilities across infinity - physics, metaphysics, human nature, history, science, technology, poetry, life, death, religion, state of the nation and what not, not in any particular order. 

Futile as quite a few of these journeys are, many a times I have felt the lack of a repository where I can store a few worthy ones, which I can reflect upon later. This is an effort to create one such place, to lay down those thoughts. In most of the cases, I would be the protagonist, the antagonist and the sole arbitrator, but one reading will have every right to be the judge. Sometimes, someone else may present a view, directly or through me. The writing process is cathartic and like red wine, can calm you. There will be no judgments, just plain observations and through these, the fundamental objective will to be able to rise above the noise and reflect upon things which matter a little more than earning daily bread, strictly in my opinion. And hence, it will definitely not be about work.