The Society of Mind - Revision history

Robert.adlington: /* Appendix */

2025-10-20T06:36:42Z

Appendix

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	* In their first few days, human infants learn to distinguish people by their odors; then, over the next few weeks, they learn to recognize individuals by sound of voice; only after several months do they start to reliably distinguish the sights of faces. Most likely we learn to make each of these distinctions by several different methods, and it is probably no accident that these abilities develop in a sequence that corresponds to their increasing complexity.		* In their first few days, human infants learn to distinguish people by their odors; then, over the next few weeks, they learn to recognize individuals by sound of voice; only after several months do they start to reliably distinguish the sights of faces. Most likely we learn to make each of these distinctions by several different methods, and it is probably no accident that these abilities develop in a sequence that corresponds to their increasing complexity.
	* Surely our human genes provide us with a great deal of instinctive wiring. However, far more than any other kind of animal, we also have machinery that can bridge new agencies across the older ones, so that we can learn to bury ancient instincts under modern social disciplines.		* Surely our human genes provide us with a great deal of instinctive wiring. However, far more than any other kind of animal, we also have machinery that can bridge new agencies across the older ones, so that we can learn to bury ancient instincts under modern social disciplines.

			== Glossary - Agents and Agencies ==

			* Agency - An assembly of parts considered in terms of what it can accomplish as a unit.
			* Agent - Any part or process of the mind that by itself is simple enough to understand - even though the interactions among groups of such agents may produce phenomena that are much harder to understand.
			* B-Brain - An agency (part of the brain) that is not connected to the world, but supervises or analyzes the work of an A-Brain (another part of the brain that is connected to the outside).
			* Censor - An agent that inhibits or suppresses the operation of other agents.
			* Demon - An agent that constantly watches for a certain condition and intervenes when it occurs.
			* Direction-Neme - An agent associated with a particular direction or region in space.
			* Isonome - A signal or pathway in the brain that has similar effects on several different agencies.
			* K-Line - The theory that certain kinds of memories are based on turning on sets of agents that reactivate one's previous partial mental states.
			* Memorizer - An agent that can reset an agency into some previously useful state.
			* Micromemory - The smallest components of our short-term memory systems.
			* Microneme - A neme involved with agents at a relatively low level
			* Neme - An agent whose output represents a fragment of an idea or state of mind. The context within which a typical agent words is largely determined by the activity of the nemes that reach it.
			* Nome - An agent whose outputs affect an agency in some predetermined manner. Its effect depends more on genetic architecture than on learning from experience.
			* Paranome - An agent that operates on agencies of several different mental realms at once, with similar effects on all of them.
			* Polyneme - An agent that arouses different activities, at the same time, in different agencies - as a result of learning from experience.
			* Pronome - A type of agent associated with a particular role or aspect of a representation. Pronome agents frequently control the attachments of terminals of frames to other frames.
			* Recognizer - An agent that becomes active in response to a particular pattern of input signals.
			* Sensor - An agent whose inputs are sensitive to stimuli that come from the world outside the brain.
			* Suppressor - A censor-like agent that works by disrupting a mental state that has already occurred. Suppressors are easier to construct than censors, and require less memory, but are much less efficient.

Robert.adlington: /* 30. Mental Models */

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30. Mental Models

Robert.adlington: /* 30. Mental Models */

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30. Mental Models

@@ Line 622: / Line 622: @@
 ** Once scientists like Volta and Ampere discovered how to represent electricity in terms of the pressures and flows of fluids, they could transport much of what they already knew about fluids to the domain of electricity.
 ** Good metaphors are useful because they transport uniframes, intact, from one world into another. Such cross-realm correspondences can enable us to transport entire families of problems into other realms, in which we can apply to them some already well-developed skills. However, such correspondences are hard to find since most reformulations merely transform the uniframes of one realm into disorderly accumulations in the other realm.
-** Our greatest ideas, like our evolutionary genes, need form only once, by accident, and then can spread from brain to brain<;
+** Our greatest ideas, like our evolutionary genes, need form only once, by accident, and then can spread from brain to brain.
 == 30. Mental Models ==
 == Appendix ==

Robert.adlington: /* 29. The Realms of Thought */

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29. The Realms of Thought

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 == 29. The Realms of Thought ==
 == 30. Mental Models ==
 == Appendix ==

Robert.adlington: /* 28. The Mind and the World */

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28. The Mind and the World

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	== 28. The Mind and the World ==		== 28. The Mind and the World ==

			* <u>The Myth of Mental Energy</u> - Machines and brains require ordinary energy to do their jobs - and need no other mental forms of energy. Causality is quite enough to keep them working toward their goals.
			* <u>Magnitude and Marketplace</u> - At every moment of our lives, we're forced to choose between alternatives we can't compare. We turn to using quantities when we can't compare the qualities of things. To the extent that success in interchangeable with time or doof or energy, it's useful to treat pleasure as equivalent to wealth.
			* <u>Quantity and Quality</u> - Whenever we turn to measurements, we forfeit some uses of intellect. Currencies and magnitudes help us make comparisons only by concealing the differences among what they purport to represent.
			** Inside our brains, many agencies have come to influence one another by controlling the amounts of various chemicals in much the way that many kinds of human transactions have come to use substances like candy, coins, or bags of salt - or banknotes backed by promises.
			* <u>Mind Over Matter</u> - In order for hunger to keep us fed, it must engage some agency that gives priority to food-acquiring goals. To serve as useful "warning signs", feelings like pain and hunger must be engineered not simply to indicate dangerous conditions, but to anticipate them and warn us before too much damage is done.
			** Since our feelings of pain, depression, exhaustion, and discouragement are themselves mere products of our minds activities - and one that are engineered to warn us before we reach our ultimate limits - we need no extraordinary power of mind over matter to overcome them. It is merely a matter of finding ways to rearrange our priorities.
			* <u>The Mind and the World</u> - We spend our lives in several realms:
			** The ordinary physical world of objects that exist in space and time and which obey simple laws. When any object moves or changes, we can usually account for it in terms of other objects pushing it, or else of gravity or wind.
			** A social realm of persons, families, and companies, whose entities appear to be ruled by quite different kinds of causes and laws. Whenever a person moves or changes, we look for signs of intentions, ambitions, infatuations, promises, threats, and the like - none of which could affect a brick.
			** A psychological realm - inhabited by entities we call by names like meanings, ideas, and memories. These too appear to obey different rules.
			** Minds are simply what brains do. It doesn't matter what agents are; it only matters what they do - and what they are connected to.
			* <u>Minds and Machines</u> - Why are processes so hard to classify? In earlier times, we could usually judge machines and processes by how they transformed raw materials into finished products. But it makes no sense to speak of brains as though they manufacture thoughts the way factories make cars.
			** The difference is that brains use processes that change themselves - and this means we cannot separate such processes from the products they produce.
			** In particular, brains make memories, which change the ways we'll subsequently think. The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves. Because the whole idea of self-modifying processes is new to our experience, we cannot yet trust our commonsense judgments about such matters.
			* <u>Individual Identities</u> - A mind is a way in which each state gives rise to the state that follows it. If a new machine that duplicated your brain cells as transistors had a suitable body and were placed in a similar environment, its sequence of thoughts would be essentially the same as yours - since its mental states would be equivalent to yours.
			* <u>Overlapping Minds</u> - I can make sense to think there exists, inside your brain, a society of different minds. Like members of a family, the different minds can work together to help each other, each still having its own mental experiences that the others never know about.
			** Several such agencies could have many agents in common, yet still have no more sense of each other's interior activities than do people whose apartments share opposite sides of the same walls. Like tenants in a rooming house, the process that share your brain need not share one another's mental lives.

	== 29. The Realms of Thought ==		== 29. The Realms of Thought ==

Robert.adlington: /* 26. Language- Frames */

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26. Language- Frames

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	* <u>Sentence and Nonsense</u> - A word string seems "grammatical" if all its words fit quickly and easily into frames that connect suitably to one another. The distinction between sense and nonsense is only partly a matter of grammar. Ungrammatical expressions can frequently be meaningful when they lead to clear and stable mental states. Grammar is the servant of language, not the master.		* <u>Sentence and Nonsense</u> - A word string seems "grammatical" if all its words fit quickly and easily into frames that connect suitably to one another. The distinction between sense and nonsense is only partly a matter of grammar. Ungrammatical expressions can frequently be meaningful when they lead to clear and stable mental states. Grammar is the servant of language, not the master.
	* <u>Frames for Nouns</u> - At various points in their development, most children seem suddenly to comprehend new kinds of sentences. Many scientists wonder why so many human languages use similar structures such as nouns, adjectives, verbs, clauses, and sentences. It is likely that some of these reflect what is genetically built into our language-agencies. The most common forms of phrases could arise not so much from the architecture of the language-agencies as from the machinery used by other agencies for representing objects, actions, differences, and purposes, and from how those other agencies manipulate their memories. The ways we think must have a strong and universal influence on how we speak - if only through its influence on the sorts of things we'll want to say.		* <u>Frames for Nouns</u> - At various points in their development, most children seem suddenly to comprehend new kinds of sentences. Many scientists wonder why so many human languages use similar structures such as nouns, adjectives, verbs, clauses, and sentences. It is likely that some of these reflect what is genetically built into our language-agencies. The most common forms of phrases could arise not so much from the architecture of the language-agencies as from the machinery used by other agencies for representing objects, actions, differences, and purposes, and from how those other agencies manipulate their memories. The ways we think must have a strong and universal influence on how we speak - if only through its influence on the sorts of things we'll want to say.
	* Frames for Verbs - In the earliest stages of learning to speak, we simply fill the terminals of word-string frames with nemes for words. Then, later, we learn to fill those terminals with other filled-in language frames.		* <u>Frames for Verbs</u> - In the earliest stages of learning to speak, we simply fill the terminals of word-string frames with nemes for words. Then, later, we learn to fill those terminals with other filled-in language frames.
	** Each child must learn how the order of the words affects which terminal each phrase should fill.		** Each child must learn how the order of the words affects which terminal each phrase should fill.
	** How did language forms evolve? We have no record of their earliest forms, but they surely were affected at every stage by the kinds of questions and problems that seemed important at the time.		** How did language forms evolve? We have no record of their earliest forms, but they surely were affected at every stage by the kinds of questions and problems that seemed important at the time.
	* Language and Vision -The language-agency must be able to interrupt itself, while handling one phrase, to work on parts of another phrase, and this involves some complex short-term memory skills. But in vision, too, there must be similar processes involved in breaking scenes apart and representing them as composed of objects and relationships.		* <u>Language and Vision</u> -The language-agency must be able to interrupt itself, while handling one phrase, to work on parts of another phrase, and this involves some complex short-term memory skills. But in vision, too, there must be similar processes involved in breaking scenes apart and representing them as composed of objects and relationships.
	** Among our ancestors, vision greatly predates language, so if these abilities are related, our language-agencies themselves more likely evolved from variants of genes that first evolved in shaping the architecture of our vision-systems.		** Among our ancestors, vision greatly predates language, so if these abilities are related, our language-agencies themselves more likely evolved from variants of genes that first evolved in shaping the architecture of our vision-systems.
	* Learning Language - The vocabulary of a language is the product of a project that spans the history of a culture and can involve millions of person years of work. Every sense of every word records some intellectual discovery that now outlives the myriad other, less distinguished thoughts that never earned a name.		* <u>Learning Language</u> - The vocabulary of a language is the product of a project that spans the history of a culture and can involve millions of person years of work. Every sense of every word records some intellectual discovery that now outlives the myriad other, less distinguished thoughts that never earned a name.
	** Each person invents some new ideas, but most of these will die when their owners do, except for those that make their way into the culture's lexicon. Still, from that ever-growing reservoir we each inherit many thousands of powerful ideas that all our predecessors found.		** Each person invents some new ideas, but most of these will die when their owners do, except for those that make their way into the culture's lexicon. Still, from that ever-growing reservoir we each inherit many thousands of powerful ideas that all our predecessors found.
	** But, we cannot learn meanings only by memorizing definitions: we must also understand them. Each situation in which a word is used must suggest some mixture of materials already in the mind of a listener, who then, alone, must attempt to assemble these ingredients into something that will work in consonance with other things already learned. Definitions sometimes help but one must separate the essences from the accidents of the context, link together structures and functions, and build connections to the other things one knows.		** But, we cannot learn meanings only by memorizing definitions: we must also understand them. Each situation in which a word is used must suggest some mixture of materials already in the mind of a listener, who then, alone, must attempt to assemble these ingredients into something that will work in consonance with other things already learned. Definitions sometimes help but one must separate the essences from the accidents of the context, link together structures and functions, and build connections to the other things one knows.
	** Along with the words, we also have to learn the grammar-tactics for using them. Most children start by using only one or two words at a time. Then, over the next two or three years, they learn to speak in sentences. It usually takes a full decade to learn most of the conventions of adult speech, but we often see relatively sudden advances over concentrated periods of time.		** Along with the words, we also have to learn the grammar-tactics for using them. Most children start by using only one or two words at a time. Then, over the next two or three years, they learn to speak in sentences. It usually takes a full decade to learn most of the conventions of adult speech, but we often see relatively sudden advances over concentrated periods of time.
	** Many sections of our brains appear to demonstrate capacities for rearranging pronome roles even before we learn to speak. Perhaps we ought to wonder why it takes children so long to speak competently, when they already do so many similar things inside their heads.		** Many sections of our brains appear to demonstrate capacities for rearranging pronome roles even before we learn to speak. Perhaps we ought to wonder why it takes children so long to speak competently, when they already do so many similar things inside their heads.
	* Grammar - As we develop skills for building chains and trees from other frames, the language agency can learn to use corresponding grammar-tactics to express those chains - stringing together phrases and sentences with conjunction words like "and" and "but". As we improve our methods for controlling memories and managing interruptions, we can learn to combine those skills with clause-interrupting forms like "who" and "which".		* <u>Grammar</u> - As we develop skills for building chains and trees from other frames, the language agency can learn to use corresponding grammar-tactics to express those chains - stringing together phrases and sentences with conjunction words like "and" and "but". As we improve our methods for controlling memories and managing interruptions, we can learn to combine those skills with clause-interrupting forms like "who" and "which".
	** There seems scarcely any limit to the complexity of our social inventions for expressing mental processes, and it takes most children many years to master all the language arts their ancestors evolved.		** There seems scarcely any limit to the complexity of our social inventions for expressing mental processes, and it takes most children many years to master all the language arts their ancestors evolved.
	* Coherent Discourse - We're normally quite unaware of how our grammar-tactics constrain us in our choices of words. We're often somewhat aware of other language-tactics we use to guide our listeners' minds - to change the focus from one theme to another, to adjust the levels of detail, to shift between foreground and setting.		* <u>Coherent Discourse</u> - We're normally quite unaware of how our grammar-tactics constrain us in our choices of words. We're often somewhat aware of other language-tactics we use to guide our listeners' minds - to change the focus from one theme to another, to adjust the levels of detail, to shift between foreground and setting.
	** We learn to use phrases like "by the way" to change the topic of concern, to say "for example" to shift to a finer level of detail, to say "but" to modify an expectation or to interrupt the usual flow, or to say "in any case" or "in spite of that" to indicate the end of an interruption or elaboration.		** We learn to use phrases like "by the way" to change the topic of concern, to say "for example" to shift to a finer level of detail, to say "but" to modify an expectation or to interrupt the usual flow, or to say "in any case" or "in spite of that" to indicate the end of an interruption or elaboration.
	** To understand what people say, we also exploit our vast stores of common knowledge, not only about how specific words are related to the subjects of concern, but also about how to express and discuss those subjects. Every human community evolves a great array of discourse-forms to shape its stories, explanations, conversations, discussions, and styles of argument.		** To understand what people say, we also exploit our vast stores of common knowledge, not only about how specific words are related to the subjects of concern, but also about how to express and discuss those subjects. Every human community evolves a great array of discourse-forms to shape its stories, explanations, conversations, discussions, and styles of argument.
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	== 27. Censors and Jokes ==		== 27. Censors and Jokes ==

			* <u>Demons</u> - Whenever we hear about a particular event, specific recognition-agents are thereby aroused. These then proceed actively to watch and wait for other related types of events. Because these recognition-agents lurk silently, to intervene only in certain circumstances, they are sometimes called "demons".
			** How easy should it be to activate demons? How long should they then remain active? If too few demons are aroused, we'll be slow to understand what's happening. But if too many become active, we'll get confused by false alarms.
			** There are no simple solutions to these problems, and what we call "understanding" is a huge accumulation of skills.
			** You might understand certain parts of a story by using separate, isolated demons; you might comprehend other aspects of that same story by using larger-scale processes that try to match the sequence of events to various remembered scripts; yet other understandings might depend upon which agents are aroused by various micronemes.
			** How much of the fascination in telling a story, or in listening to one, comes from the manipulations of our demons' expectations.
			* <u>Suppressors</u> - All communities evolve some prohibitions and taboos to tell their members what they shouldn't do. That, too, must happen in our minds: we accumulate memories to tell ourselves what we shouldn't think.
			** Suppressor-agents - Wait until you get a certain "bad idea". Then they prevent your taking the corresponding action, and make you wait until you think of some alternative. If a suppressor could speak, it would say, "Stop thinking that!"
			** Censor-agents - Need not wait until a certain bad idea occurs; instead, they intercept the states of mind that usually precede that thought. If a censor could speak, it would say "Don't even begin to think that!"
			* <u>Censors</u> - To prevent a particular mental state from occurring, an early-acting censor must learn to recognize all the states of mind that might precede it. thus, each censor may, in time, require a substantial memory bank. For all we know, each person accumulates millions of censor memories, to avoid the thought-patterns found to be ineffectual or harmful.
			** It is easier to notice what your mind does than to notice what it doesn't do, and this means that we can't use introspection to perceive the work of these inhibitory agencies. I suspect that this effect has seriously distorted our conceptions of psychology and that once we recognize the importance of censors and other forms of negative recognizers, we'll find that they constitute large portions of our minds.
			** Sometimes, our censors and suppressors must themselves be suppressed. In order to sketch out long-range plans, for example, we must adopt a style of thought that clears the mind of trivia and sets minor obstacles aside. But that could be very hard to do if too many censors remained on the scene; they'd make us shy away from strategies that aren't guaranteed to work, and tear apart our sketchy plans before we can start to accomplish them.
			* <u>Exceptions to Logic</u> - We search for "islands of consistency" within which ordinary reasoning seems safe. We work also to find and mark the unsafe boundaries of those domains.
			** In civilized communities, appointed guardians post signs to warn about sharp turns, thin ice, and animals that bite. And so do our philosophers, when they report to us their paradoxical discoveries - those tables of the l<iar who admits to lying and the Barber who shaves all the people who do not shave themselves. These valuable lessons teach us which thoughts we shouldn't think.
			** It is virtually impossible to state any facts about the real world that actually are always true. Exceptions are a fact of life because few facts are always true. Logic fails because it tries to find exceptions to this rule.
			* <u>Jokes</u> - Freud suggests that we form censors in our minds as barriers against forbidden thoughts and jokes are stories designed to fool the censors. A joke's power comes from a description that fits two different frames at once.
			** He suggested that children construct censors in response to prohibitions by their parents or peers. This explains why so many jokes involve taboos concerning cruelty, sexuality, and other subjects that human communities typically link to guilt, disgust, or shame.
			** Another theory was that nonsense jokes reflect "a wish to return to carefree childhood, when one was permitted to think without any compulsion to be logical, and to put words together without sense, for the simpler pleasures of rhythm or rhyme." Absurd results of reasoning must be tabooed as thoroughly as social mistakes and inanities! And that's why stupid thoughts can seem as humorous as antisocial ones.
			* <u>Humor and Censorship</u> - When we learn in a serious context, the result is to change connections among ordinary agents<; but when we learn in a humorous context, the principal result is to change the connections that involve our censors and suppressors.
			** We must make a sharp distinction between our positive, action-oriented memories (mental states which are desirable) and the negative, inhibitory memories (mental states which are undesirable) embodied in our censors.
			** When people do things that are good, we talk to them in encouraging tones - and this switches on their positive learning machinery.
			** When people do things we consider stupid or wrong, we then complain in scornful tones or laugh derisively - and this switches on their negative learning machinery. Scolding may tend to produce suppressors (who need to learn which mental states are undesirable), while laughing produces censors (who must remember which mental states were undesirable).
			* <u>Laughter</u> - It's function is to disrupt another person's reasoning. Seeing a person laugh creates such chaos in the mind that you can't proceed along your present train of thought. Derision makes you feel ridiculous; it prevents you from being serious. It focuses your attention on the present stat of mind. By preventing you from taking seriously your present thought, and thus proceeding to develop it, laughter gives you time to build a censor against that state of mind.
			** Humor must have grown along with our abilities to criticize ourselves, starting with simple internal suppressors that evolved into more sophisticated censors.
			* <u>Good Humor</u> - To ask how humor works in a grown-up person is to ask how everything works in them, since humor gets involved with so many other things.

	== 28. The Mind and the World ==		== 28. The Mind and the World ==

Robert.adlington: /* 26. Language- Frames */

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26. Language- Frames

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	== 26. Language- Frames ==		== 26. Language- Frames ==
			FC Bartlett: "Thinking... is possible only when a way has been found of breaking up the "massed" influence of past stimuli and situation, only when a device has already been discovered for conquering the sequential tyranny of past reactions. But though it is a later and a higher development, it does not supersede the method of images. It has its own drawbacks. Contrasted with imagining it loses something of vivacity, of vividness, of variety. Its prevailing instruments are words, and, not only because these are social, but also because in use they are necessarily strung out in sequence, they drop into habit reactions even more readily than images do. [With thinking] we run greater and greater risk of being caught up in generalities that may have little to do with actual concrete experience.

			* <u>Understanding Words</u> - A "party-invitation" frame - I was raised in a culture in which an invitation to a party carries the obligation to arrive well dressed and to bring a birthday present. Accordingly, when I read or hear that Mary has been invited to a party, I attribute to Mary the same sorts of subjective reactions and concerns that I would have in such a situation. Therefore, although the story never mentions clothes or gifts at all, to expect their possible involvement seems only simple common sense. But though it is common, it is not simple.
			* <u>Understanding Stories</u> - What makes a story comprehensible? What gives it coherency? The secret lies in how each phrase and sentence stirs frames into activity or helps already active ones to fill their terminals. When the first sentence of our story mentions a party, various frames are excited - and these are still active in the reader's mind when the next sentence is read. The ground is prepared for understanding the second sentence because so many agents are already ready to recognize possible references to presents, clothes, and other matters that might be related to birthday parties.
			* <u>Sentence-Frames</u> - How does the understanding listener know which slots in the frame to insert each word in the sentence? By arousing familiar frames and using standard grammatical forms, we can say a great deal in a very few words.
			* <u>A Party-Frame</u> - Dictionary definitions never say enough. Every child knows that a party is more than just a gathering assembled to celebrate someone's birthday. But no brief definition can describe the complicated customs, rules, and regulations that typical communities prescribe for such ceremonies.
			** To all their young participants, parties unfold exactly as a party should, with all these queer complexities. We take our social customs for granted, as though they were natural phenomena. Few guests or hosts will ever wonder why their parties have those explicit forms or ask about their origins. As far as any child can tell, that's just how parties ought to go; they always did and always will. And so it is with almost everything we know.
			* <u>Story-Frames</u> - We take it for granted that anyone can understand a story. But every kind of narrative demands some listening skills. To listen well, a child must acquire potent forms of self-control.
			** You can prepare the listener by saying, "Would you like to hear a story?" or simply "Once upon a time..." Such phrases have very specific effects: to set the listener into a norm and familiar state of expecting to hear a certain type of narrative - a story.
			** Most stories starts with just enough to set the scene. They they introduce some characters, with hints about their principal concerns. Next, we get some clues about some "main event" or problem to be solved. From that point on, the listener has a general idea of what comes next: there will be more development of the problem; then it will be resolved somehow; and then the story will end, perhaps by giving some practical or moral advice.
			** These magic story-starting words arouse, in knowing listeners' minds, great hosts of expectation frames to help them anticipate which terminals to fill. They also tell them that what comes after is fictional or, in any case, far too remote to activate much personal concern. They should disregard the normal sympathies one should feel when real persons meet the monstrous destinies so usual in children's tales.
			* <u>Sentence and Nonsense</u> - A word string seems "grammatical" if all its words fit quickly and easily into frames that connect suitably to one another. The distinction between sense and nonsense is only partly a matter of grammar. Ungrammatical expressions can frequently be meaningful when they lead to clear and stable mental states. Grammar is the servant of language, not the master.
			* <u>Frames for Nouns</u> - At various points in their development, most children seem suddenly to comprehend new kinds of sentences. Many scientists wonder why so many human languages use similar structures such as nouns, adjectives, verbs, clauses, and sentences. It is likely that some of these reflect what is genetically built into our language-agencies. The most common forms of phrases could arise not so much from the architecture of the language-agencies as from the machinery used by other agencies for representing objects, actions, differences, and purposes, and from how those other agencies manipulate their memories. The ways we think must have a strong and universal influence on how we speak - if only through its influence on the sorts of things we'll want to say.
			* Frames for Verbs - In the earliest stages of learning to speak, we simply fill the terminals of word-string frames with nemes for words. Then, later, we learn to fill those terminals with other filled-in language frames.
			** Each child must learn how the order of the words affects which terminal each phrase should fill.
			** How did language forms evolve? We have no record of their earliest forms, but they surely were affected at every stage by the kinds of questions and problems that seemed important at the time.
			* Language and Vision -The language-agency must be able to interrupt itself, while handling one phrase, to work on parts of another phrase, and this involves some complex short-term memory skills. But in vision, too, there must be similar processes involved in breaking scenes apart and representing them as composed of objects and relationships.
			** Among our ancestors, vision greatly predates language, so if these abilities are related, our language-agencies themselves more likely evolved from variants of genes that first evolved in shaping the architecture of our vision-systems.
			* Learning Language - The vocabulary of a language is the product of a project that spans the history of a culture and can involve millions of person years of work. Every sense of every word records some intellectual discovery that now outlives the myriad other, less distinguished thoughts that never earned a name.
			** Each person invents some new ideas, but most of these will die when their owners do, except for those that make their way into the culture's lexicon. Still, from that ever-growing reservoir we each inherit many thousands of powerful ideas that all our predecessors found.
			** But, we cannot learn meanings only by memorizing definitions: we must also understand them. Each situation in which a word is used must suggest some mixture of materials already in the mind of a listener, who then, alone, must attempt to assemble these ingredients into something that will work in consonance with other things already learned. Definitions sometimes help but one must separate the essences from the accidents of the context, link together structures and functions, and build connections to the other things one knows.
			** Along with the words, we also have to learn the grammar-tactics for using them. Most children start by using only one or two words at a time. Then, over the next two or three years, they learn to speak in sentences. It usually takes a full decade to learn most of the conventions of adult speech, but we often see relatively sudden advances over concentrated periods of time.
			** Many sections of our brains appear to demonstrate capacities for rearranging pronome roles even before we learn to speak. Perhaps we ought to wonder why it takes children so long to speak competently, when they already do so many similar things inside their heads.
			* Grammar - As we develop skills for building chains and trees from other frames, the language agency can learn to use corresponding grammar-tactics to express those chains - stringing together phrases and sentences with conjunction words like "and" and "but". As we improve our methods for controlling memories and managing interruptions, we can learn to combine those skills with clause-interrupting forms like "who" and "which".
			** There seems scarcely any limit to the complexity of our social inventions for expressing mental processes, and it takes most children many years to master all the language arts their ancestors evolved.
			* Coherent Discourse - We're normally quite unaware of how our grammar-tactics constrain us in our choices of words. We're often somewhat aware of other language-tactics we use to guide our listeners' minds - to change the focus from one theme to another, to adjust the levels of detail, to shift between foreground and setting.
			** We learn to use phrases like "by the way" to change the topic of concern, to say "for example" to shift to a finer level of detail, to say "but" to modify an expectation or to interrupt the usual flow, or to say "in any case" or "in spite of that" to indicate the end of an interruption or elaboration.
			** To understand what people say, we also exploit our vast stores of common knowledge, not only about how specific words are related to the subjects of concern, but also about how to express and discuss those subjects. Every human community evolves a great array of discourse-forms to shape its stories, explanations, conversations, discussions, and styles of argument.
			** Just as we learn grammar forms for fitting words to sentence-frames, we also build up stocks of plots to organize our story tales and standard personalities to fill the roles of their protagonists - and every child must learn these forms.

	== 27. Censors and Jokes ==		== 27. Censors and Jokes ==

Robert.adlington: /* 24. Frames */

2025-10-18T21:10:35Z

24. Frames

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	** To reason well, our memory-control agencies must learn to move our memories around as though those memories were building-blocks. Conceivably, those agencies have to learn such skills before we can learn to build with blocks in the outside world of object-things.		** To reason well, our memory-control agencies must learn to move our memories around as though those memories were building-blocks. Conceivably, those agencies have to learn such skills before we can learn to build with blocks in the outside world of object-things.
	* <u>Direction Nemes</u> - If you were walking through a circular tube, you could scarcely keep from thinking in terms of bottom and top and sides - however vaguely their boundaries are defined. Without a way to represent the scene in terms of familiar parts, you'd have no well-established thinking skills to apply to it.		* <u>Direction Nemes</u> - If you were walking through a circular tube, you could scarcely keep from thinking in terms of bottom and top and sides - however vaguely their boundaries are defined. Without a way to represent the scene in terms of familiar parts, you'd have no well-established thinking skills to apply to it.
	* Picture Frames - Whenever we see a thing so utterly new that it resembles nothing we've ever seen before, this means that none of our prelearned frames will fit it very well. But we can almost always use a less specific frame that fits most any room at all. The trick will be to make all our frames for different rooms share the same terminals, so that when we interchange those frames, the information stored in them remains.		* <u>Picture Frames</u> - Whenever we see a thing so utterly new that it resembles nothing we've ever seen before, this means that none of our prelearned frames will fit it very well. But we can almost always use a less specific frame that fits most any room at all. The trick will be to make all our frames for different rooms share the same terminals, so that when we interchange those frames, the information stored in them remains.
	* How Picture-Frames Work - Your eyes move in various directions, controlled in some way by direction-nemes. No suppose that every time you move your eyes, the same direction-nemes also activate the K-lines attached to the corresponding terminals of a certain vision-frame. Suppose also that those K-lines are ready to form new memories. Then each time you look in a different direction, your vision-system will describe what you see - and the corresponding K-line will record what you see when you look in that direction.		* <u>How Picture-Frames Work</u> - Your eyes move in various directions, controlled in some way by direction-nemes. No suppose that every time you move your eyes, the same direction-nemes also activate the K-lines attached to the corresponding terminals of a certain vision-frame. Suppose also that those K-lines are ready to form new memories. Then each time you look in a different direction, your vision-system will describe what you see - and the corresponding K-line will record what you see when you look in that direction.
	** If, at a later date, that same frame is activated by memory than, as any of your agencies conceives of looking in a certain direction, the thought itself will involve the activation of the corresponding direction-neme: then, before you have a chance to think of anything else, the corresponding K-line will be aroused		** If, at a later date, that same frame is activated by memory than, as any of your agencies conceives of looking in a certain direction, the thought itself will involve the activation of the corresponding direction-neme: then, before you have a chance to think of anything else, the corresponding K-line will be aroused
	** Whichever way your mind's eye looks, you'll seem to see the corresponding aspect of the scene. You will experience an almost perfect "simulus" of being there!		** Whichever way your mind's eye looks, you'll seem to see the corresponding aspect of the scene. You will experience an almost perfect "simulus" of being there!
	* Recognizers and Memorizers - We'll assume that every frame is activated by some set of recognizers, types of agent that, in a sense, are the opposite of K-lines, since instead of arousing a certain state of mind, they have to recognize when a certain state of mind occurs.		* <u>Recognizers and Memorizers</u> - We'll assume that every frame is activated by some set of recognizers, types of agent that, in a sense, are the opposite of K-lines, since instead of arousing a certain state of mind, they have to recognize when a certain state of mind occurs.
	** The recognizers of a frame are very much like the terminals of a frame, except that the connections to the terminals are reversed.		** The recognizers of a frame are very much like the terminals of a frame, except that the connections to the terminals are reversed.
	** This suggests that not only frames but agencies in general might be organized in the form of agents sandwiched between recognizers and memorizers.		** This suggests that not only frames but agencies in general might be organized in the form of agents sandwiched between recognizers and memorizers.

	== 25. Frame-Arrays ==		== 25. Frame-Arrays ==

			* <u>One Frame at a Time</u> - Our agencies can tolerate just one interpretation at a time. Our vision-systems are born equipped, on each of several different levels, with some sort of "locking-in" machinery that at every moment permits each part, at each level, to be assigned to one and only one whole at the next level. In every region of the picture, the frames must compete with one another to account for each feature.
			* <u>Frame Arrays</u> - Are groups of frames that share the same terminals. When you represent a thing's details with a frame-array, you can continue to move around yet keep in mind all that you've observed from those different viewpoints, even though you've never seen them all at once. This gives the wonderful ability to conceive of all of an object's different views as aspects of a single thing.
			** First you try to match what you see to the frame-arrays in the memories you have accumulated and refined over periods of may years. How do they originate? Presumably this pattern is built into the architecture of major sections of the brain. But although the pattern is built-in, developing the skills for using it involves each child in more than a decade of predestined learning.
			* <u>The Stationary World</u> - Our frame arrays store what we learn about the world at terminals that stay unchanged when we move our heads and bodies around. When you activate your move east direction-neme in order to make your body move in that direction, the same signal will also make this frame-array replace the middle frame with the one to its left. This will compensate for your change of viewpoint and determine what you "expect" to see - and the scene will appear to remain stationary!
			* <u>The Sense of Continuity</u> - Existence seems continuous to us not because we continually experience what is happening in the present, but because we hold to our memories of how things were in the recent past. Without those short-term memories, all would seem entirely new at every instant, and we would have no sense at all of continuity or, for that matter, of existence.
			** The power of consciousness comes not from ceaseless change of state, but from having enough stability to discern significant changes in our surroundings. To "notice" change requires the ability to resist it. In order to sense what persists through time, one must be able to examine and compare descriptions from the recent past. We notice change in spite of change, not because of it.
			** Our sense of constant contact with the world is not a genuine experience; instead, it is a form of immanence illusion. We have the sense of actuality when every question asked of our visual systems is answered so swiftly that it seems as though those answers were already there. And that's what frame-arrays provide us with: once any frame fills its terminals, the terminals of the other frames in its array are also filled. When every change of view engages frames whose terminals are already filled, albeit only be default, then sight seems instantaneous.
			* <u>Expectations</u> - Whenever we become familiar with some particular environment, we represent it with a frame-array whose terminals have already been filled. Then for each direction of motion inside that environment, our vision-systems activate the corresponding frames of that array. We also activate the corresponding frames even when we merely consider or imagine a certain body motion - and this amounts to knowing what to expect.
			** In general, each frame of a spatial frame-array is controlled by some direction-neme.
			** However in surroundings that are either especially familiar or whose relationships we do not understand, we may learn to use more specific stimuli instead of using direction-nemes to switch the frames. For example, when you approach a familiar door, the frame for the room that you expect to find behind that door might be activated, not by your direction of motion but by your recognition of that particular door.
			* <u>The Frame Idea</u> - Comes from a 1974 essay: "A Framework for Representing Knowledge".

	== 26. Language- Frames ==		== 26. Language- Frames ==

Robert.adlington: /* 24. Frames */

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24. Frames

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	== 24. Frames ==		== 24. Frames ==

			* <u>The Speed of Thought</u> - Sight is intertwined with memory. When face to face with someone you've just met you seem to react almost instantly - but not as much to what you see as to what that sight reminds you of. The moment you sense the presence of a person, a whole world of assumptions are aroused that are usually true about people in general. At the same time, certain superficial cues remind you of particular people you've already met. Unconsciously, then, you will assume that this stranger must also resemble them, not only in appearance but in other traits as well.
			** No amount of self-discipline can keep those superficial similarities from provoking assumptions that may then affect your judgments and decisions. Wehn we disapprove of this, we complain about stereotypes - and when we sympathize with it, we speak of sensitivity and empathy.
			** It's much the same with language, too. If someone said, "It's raining frogs," you mind will swiftly fill with thoughts to examine this claim.
			** Each perceptual experience activates some structures that we'll call frames - structures we've acquired in the course of previous experience.
			** We all remember millions of frames, each representing some stereotyped situations like meeting a certain kind of person, being in a certain kind of room, or attending a certain kind of party.
			* <u>Frames of Mind</u> - A frame is a sort of skeleton, somewhat like an application form with many blanks or slots to be filled. We'll call these blanks its terminals; we use them as connection points to which we can attach other kinds of information.
			** Virtually any kind of agent can be attached to a frame terminal. It can be a <k-line, polyneme, isonome, memory-control script, or, best of all, another frame.
			** Default assumptions fill our frames to represent what's typical. They help us represent our previous experience. We use them for reasoning, recognizing, generalizing, predicting what may happen next, and knowing what we ought to try when expectations aren't met. Our frames affect our every thought and everything we do.
			* <u>How Trans-Frames Work</u> - When a frame-agent is activated - either by seeing, hearing, or imagining something - this supplies each of its AND-agents with an input. The second input is provided by some pronome which can thereby activate whichever agent or frame is presently assigned to that terminal. If several pronomes are active at the same time, all the corresponding agents will be activated too. When the frame above is active, the pronome for Origin will activate the K-line for Boston, and the pronome for Vehicle will activate the K-line for car.
			* <u>Default Assumptions</u> - Unless we make assumptions, the world would simply make no sense. It would be as useless to perceive how things "actually look" as it would be to watch the random dots on untuned TV screens.
			** What really matters is being able to see what things look like. This is why our brains need special machinery for representing what we see in terms of distinct objects.
			** Proust: "Each reader reads only what is already inside himself. A book is only a sort of optical instrument which the writer offers to let the reader discover in himself what he would not have found without the aid of the book.
			* <u>Nonverbal Reasoning</u> - Logical thinking is so much simpler - and less effective than common-sense thinking. Actually, what appears to be a matter of logic is usually not logical at all and frequently turns out to be wrong.
			** To reason well, our memory-control agencies must learn to move our memories around as though those memories were building-blocks. Conceivably, those agencies have to learn such skills before we can learn to build with blocks in the outside world of object-things.
			* <u>Direction Nemes</u> - If you were walking through a circular tube, you could scarcely keep from thinking in terms of bottom and top and sides - however vaguely their boundaries are defined. Without a way to represent the scene in terms of familiar parts, you'd have no well-established thinking skills to apply to it.
			* Picture Frames - Whenever we see a thing so utterly new that it resembles nothing we've ever seen before, this means that none of our prelearned frames will fit it very well. But we can almost always use a less specific frame that fits most any room at all. The trick will be to make all our frames for different rooms share the same terminals, so that when we interchange those frames, the information stored in them remains.
			* How Picture-Frames Work - Your eyes move in various directions, controlled in some way by direction-nemes. No suppose that every time you move your eyes, the same direction-nemes also activate the K-lines attached to the corresponding terminals of a certain vision-frame. Suppose also that those K-lines are ready to form new memories. Then each time you look in a different direction, your vision-system will describe what you see - and the corresponding K-line will record what you see when you look in that direction.
			** If, at a later date, that same frame is activated by memory than, as any of your agencies conceives of looking in a certain direction, the thought itself will involve the activation of the corresponding direction-neme: then, before you have a chance to think of anything else, the corresponding K-line will be aroused
			** Whichever way your mind's eye looks, you'll seem to see the corresponding aspect of the scene. You will experience an almost perfect "simulus" of being there!
			* Recognizers and Memorizers - We'll assume that every frame is activated by some set of recognizers, types of agent that, in a sense, are the opposite of K-lines, since instead of arousing a certain state of mind, they have to recognize when a certain state of mind occurs.
			** The recognizers of a frame are very much like the terminals of a frame, except that the connections to the terminals are reversed.
			** This suggests that not only frames but agencies in general might be organized in the form of agents sandwiched between recognizers and memorizers.

	== 25. Frame-Arrays ==		== 25. Frame-Arrays ==

Robert.adlington: /* 23. Comparisons */

2025-10-17T17:34:48Z

23. Comparisons

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	== 23. Comparisons ==		== 23. Comparisons ==

			* <u>A World of Differences</u> - Much of ordinary thought is based on recognizing differences. This is because it is generally useless to do anything that has no discernible effect. When we talk about cause and effect, we're referring to imaginary links that connect the differences we sense. What are goals but ways in which we represent the kinds of changes we might like to make.
			** The ability to consider differences between differences is important because it lies at the heart of our abilities to solve new problems. This is because these second-order differences are what we use to remind ourselves of other problems we already know how to solve. sometimes this is called reasoning by analogy and is considered to be an exotic or unusual way to solve problems. But in my view, it's our most ordinary way of doing things.
			* <u>Differences and Duplicates</u> - The duplication problem: The states of two different agencies cannot be compared unless those agencies themselves are virtually identical.
			* <u>Time Blinking</u> - Since most agents can be made to serve as difference-agents, we can compare two descriptions simply by presenting them to the same agency at different times. This is easily done if that agency is equipped with a pair of high-speed, temporary K-line memories. Then we need only load the two descriptions into those memories and compare them by activating first one and then the other.
			** The method of time blinking can also be used to simplify our difference-engine scheme for composing verbal expressions, since now the speaker can maintain both p and q inside the selfsame agency. If not for this, each speaker would need what would amount to a duplicate society of mind in order to simulate the listener's state.
			* <u>The Meanings of More</u> - When we hear the word "more" we become disposed to make comparisons.
			** As life proceeds, each person's concept of More grows more and more elaborate. When it comes to notions like more similar, more interesting, or more difficult, there seems not limit to the complexity of what a word like more can represent.
			* <u>Foreign Accents</u> - Most human languages use less than a hundred phonemes. If parents were inclined and able to learn to speak the ways their children do, those children would lost both incentive and opportunity to learn to speak like adults, and - if every child acquired a different set of language sounds - no common, public language would ever have evolved in the first place.

	== 24. Frames ==		== 24. Frames ==

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	== 30. Mental Models ==		== 30. Mental Models ==

	* Knowing - When Jack says "Mary knows geometry," this indicates to us that Jack would probably be satisfied by Mary's answers to the questions about geometry that he would be disposed to ask.		* <u>Knowing</u> - When Jack says "Mary knows geometry," this indicates to us that Jack would probably be satisfied by Mary's answers to the questions about geometry that he would be disposed to ask.
	** We simply assume that the speaker would expect any typical person who know Mary to agree that she knows geometry. Assumptions like that allow us to communicate; unless there is some reason to think otherwise, we assume that all the things involved are typical. It does not bother us that a professional mathematician might not agree that Mary knows geometry - because a mathematician doesn't fit our stereotype of a typical person.		** We simply assume that the speaker would expect any typical person who know Mary to agree that she knows geometry. Assumptions like that allow us to communicate; unless there is some reason to think otherwise, we assume that all the things involved are typical. It does not bother us that a professional mathematician might not agree that Mary knows geometry - because a mathematician doesn't fit our stereotype of a typical person.
	** The part of you that claims you know geometry has little in common with the other parts that actually do geometry for you; those agencies are probably incapable of speech and probably devoid of thoughts about your knowledge and beliefs.		** The part of you that claims you know geometry has little in common with the other parts that actually do geometry for you; those agencies are probably incapable of speech and probably devoid of thoughts about your knowledge and beliefs.
	** Doubt is not an enemy that sets constraints on what we know; the real danger to mental growth is perfect faith, doubt's antidote.		** Doubt is not an enemy that sets constraints on what we know; the real danger to mental growth is perfect faith, doubt's antidote.
	* Knowing and Believing - The "I" in "I believe" is not a single stable thing. A person's mind holds different views in different realms. An astronomer has many ways of thinking about sunrise.		* <u>Knowing and Believing</u> - The "I" in "I believe" is not a single stable thing. A person's mind holds different views in different realms. An astronomer has many ways of thinking about sunrise.
	** We each use many different views on situations and which we choose to use depends, from one moment to the next, upon the changing balance of power among our agencies.		** We each use many different views on situations and which we choose to use depends, from one moment to the next, upon the changing balance of power among our agencies.
	** When we commit ourselves to speak or act, we have to force ourselves into clear-cut, action-oriented states of mind in which most of our questions are suppressed. In everyday life, decisiveness is indispensable; otherwise we'd have to act so cautiously that nothing would get done. In the course of making practical decisions (and thereby turning off most agencies) we use words like "guess", "believe", and "know" to summarize our various varieties of certainty.		** When we commit ourselves to speak or act, we have to force ourselves into clear-cut, action-oriented states of mind in which most of our questions are suppressed. In everyday life, decisiveness is indispensable; otherwise we'd have to act so cautiously that nothing would get done. In the course of making practical decisions (and thereby turning off most agencies) we use words like "guess", "believe", and "know" to summarize our various varieties of certainty.
	* Mental Models - A book does not know what is written inside it, but it does contain knowledge. Saying that a person or machine possesses knowledge amounts to saying that some observer could employ that person or machine to answer certain kinds of questions.		* <u>Mental Models</u> - A book does not know what is written inside it, but it does contain knowledge. Saying that a person or machine possesses knowledge amounts to saying that some observer could employ that person or machine to answer certain kinds of questions.
	** Jack considers M to be a good model of A to the extent that he finds M useful for answering questions about A.		** Jack considers M to be a good model of A to the extent that he finds M useful for answering questions about A.
	** Jack's knowledge about A is simply whichever mental models, processes, or agencies Jack's other agencies can use to answer questions about A.		** Jack's knowledge about A is simply whichever mental models, processes, or agencies Jack's other agencies can use to answer questions about A.
	** We make mental models of people, too, in order to "know" about their dispositions, motives, and possessions.		** We make mental models of people, too, in order to "know" about their dispositions, motives, and possessions.
	** We make models of ourselves and use them to predict which sorts of things we'll later be disposed to do. Naturally, our models of ourselves will often provide us with wrong answers because they are not faultless ways to see ourselves, but merely self-made answering machines.		** We make models of ourselves and use them to predict which sorts of things we'll later be disposed to do. Naturally, our models of ourselves will often provide us with wrong answers because they are not faultless ways to see ourselves, but merely self-made answering machines.
	* World Models - You can never really describe any worldly thing in any absolute sense. Whatever you purport to say about a thing, you're only expressing your own beliefs. But, even if our models of the world cannot yield good answers about the world as a whole, and even though their other answers are frequently wrong, they can tell us something about ourselves.		* <u>World Models</u> - You can never really describe any worldly thing in any absolute sense. Whatever you purport to say about a thing, you're only expressing your own beliefs. But, even if our models of the world cannot yield good answers about the world as a whole, and even though their other answers are frequently wrong, they can tell us something about ourselves.
	** We can regard what we learn about our models of the world as constituting our models of our models of the world.		** We can regard what we learn about our models of the world as constituting our models of our models of the world.
	* Knowing Ourselves - Eventually, when probing our own motivations, we simply stop and say "Because I simply wanted to." And when we find things hard to decide, we can simply say "I just decide". And this can help us interrupt what otherwise might be an endless chain of reasoning.		* <u>Knowing Ourselves</u> - Eventually, when probing our own motivations, we simply stop and say "Because I simply wanted to." And when we find things hard to decide, we can simply say "I just decide". And this can help us interrupt what otherwise might be an endless chain of reasoning.
	* Freedom of Will - Every action we perform stems from a host of processes inside our minds. We sometimes understand a few of them, but most lie far beyond our ken. But none of us enjoys the thought that what we do depends on processes we do not know; we prefer to attribute our choices to volition, will, or self-control. We like to give names to what we do not know, and instead of wondering how we work, we simply talk of being "free". Perhaps it would be more honest to say, "My decision was determined by internal forces <i do not understand." But no one likes to feel controlled by something else.		* <u>Freedom of Will</u> - Every action we perform stems from a host of processes inside our minds. We sometimes understand a few of them, but most lie far beyond our ken. But none of us enjoys the thought that what we do depends on processes we do not know; we prefer to attribute our choices to volition, will, or self-control. We like to give names to what we do not know, and instead of wondering how we work, we simply talk of being "free". Perhaps it would be more honest to say, "My decision was determined by internal forces <i do not understand." But no one likes to feel controlled by something else.
	** Though it's futile to resist, we continue to regard both Cause and Chance as intrusions on our freedom of choice. There remains only one thing to do: we add another region to our model of our mind, a thing called "freedom of will", which lies beyond both kinds of constraint.		** Though it's futile to resist, we continue to regard both Cause and Chance as intrusions on our freedom of choice. There remains only one thing to do: we add another region to our model of our mind, a thing called "freedom of will", which lies beyond both kinds of constraint.
	* The Myth of the Third Alternative - No matter that the physical world provides no room for freedom of will: that concept is essential to our models of the mental realm. Too much of our psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up. We're virtually forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it's false - except of course, when we're inspired to find the flaws in all our beliefs, whatever may be the consequence to cheerfulness and mental peace.		* <u>The Myth of the Third Alternative</u> - No matter that the physical world provides no room for freedom of will: that concept is essential to our models of the mental realm. Too much of our psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up. We're virtually forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it's false - except of course, when we're inspired to find the flaws in all our beliefs, whatever may be the consequence to cheerfulness and mental peace.
	* Intelligence and Resourcefulness - What magic trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle:		* <u>Intelligence and Resourcefulness</u> - What magic trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle:
	** The accumulation of myriad subagents - We learn many different ways to achieve each kind of goal.		** The accumulation of myriad subagents - We learn many different ways to achieve each kind of goal.
	** The many realms of ordinary thought - When one viewpoint fails to solve a problem, we can adopt other perspectives		** The many realms of ordinary thought - When one viewpoint fails to solve a problem, we can adopt other perspectives
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	== Appendix ==		== Appendix ==

			* Chance plays a major role in human differences, because each of us starts our by drawing lots from among our parents' genes. We are similar because those alternative genes are usually quite similar - and we are different because those genes are not identical.
			* All human brains are similar in size and shape but differ in many small respects because of different alternative genes.
			* The early-starting genes frame the large-scale outlines of the brain - and their uniformity explains why people are so similar on the broadest scale. These must be the genes responsible for what we call "human nature" - the predispositions every normal person shares.
			* In their first few days, human infants learn to distinguish people by their odors; then, over the next few weeks, they learn to recognize individuals by sound of voice; only after several months do they start to reliably distinguish the sights of faces. Most likely we learn to make each of these distinctions by several different methods, and it is probably no accident that these abilities develop in a sequence that corresponds to their increasing complexity.
			* Surely our human genes provide us with a great deal of instinctive wiring. However, far more than any other kind of animal, we also have machinery that can bridge new agencies across the older ones, so that we can learn to bury ancient instincts under modern social disciplines.