“i of the Vortex”
The first post started as shown below in italics. This post provides details to connect sea squirts with predictions.
“Brains are an evolutionarily justifiable expense for species that rely on motion for survival. Brains provide internal mind-maps of the external environment in order to navigate it. The brain provides a mind-map, and the eye provides a compass to direct successful motion for growth, and survival.
The sea squirt (Tunicates), a member of the Chordates phylum that includes fish, birds, reptiles, and mammals, provides a famous example. It starts life with a cerebral ganglion and an eye to manage motion in order to find, and settle permanently on a fixed spot - at which point it eats its eye, and “brain”.”
Minds Evolved to Predict
Rodolfo R. Llinás’ book “i of the Vortex” starts with the sea squirt to show that:
- “The lesson here is quite clear: the evolutionary development of a nervous system is an exclusive property of actively moving creatures.”
Source: Llinás, Rodolfo R. (2001), i of the Vortex, From Neurons to Self, A Bradford Book, MIT Press
Also:
- “… brains are an evolutionary prerequisite for guided movement …”, and
- “The nervous system has evolved to provide a plan, one composed of goal-oriented, mostly short-lived predictions verified by moment-to-moment sensory input.”
The mind is a self-referential prediction machine that uses sensory perceptions to contextualize, and modulate its motor output. The deep history of this evolutionary development, from before the sea squirt all the way to the present times, gives us shared ancestral circuits that function as a reality emulator.
However, this ancestral circuitry - the “connectivity-matrix” between sensory input and motor output - continues to network, or to shrivel on a unique use-it-or-lose-it basis as we move through our own life history. Thus, our mind, the neuronal geometry of this connectivity-matrix, becomes distinct for each individual, reflecting one’s own, and non-repeatable history of inputs and outputs.
Thinking means internalizing movement with a mind-map. “Mindness” comes from making predictions, creating the expectation of what is yet to come. Our sense of self comes from the centralization of such predictions whether we are aware of it in consciousness, or not.
Nested Maps
Our mind is not a continuous processor because the computational overhead would overcome its capacity. Instead, it makes predictions across nested mind-maps with different scales of time and motor output.
The chart shown below reflects different scales of thinking, predicting, understanding, and knowing.
Knowledge represents validated predictions. Thus, knowledge does not stay settled, but instead dances on the edge of the next invalidated prediction.
Llinás’ work belongs in “Biology”, as shown in red in the middle of the right column of the yellow box that illustrates knowledge areas.
Scales, shown in the left column of the yellow box, expand up and down from Biology, to include Humanities and Cosmology, as well as Chemistry, and Physics.
Moving down the scale, Llinás shows that:
- “… prediction begins at the single neuron level.”, and
- the voltage of neurons oscillates constantly at a frequency of 10 Hz +/- 2Hz.
The internal state of the mind operates at its own frequency, independently of the inputs from sensory perception. The mind makes a “hum” of its own, maintaining its internal connections as an emulator of its task environment.
Llinás also shows that neuronal resonance moves this baseline oscillation to a level of coherence that triggers motor action. Neurons with voltage that oscillates in phase can resonate with one another enabling them to reach other and distant groups of neurons. This simultaneity of brain activity across distances provides an explanation for cognition.
The “kinetic melody” of the mind can play its own internal, and resonating harmonics on top of the baseline to form mind-maps of reality that are modulated by sensory perceptions.
However, a Map is Not the Territory
Mind-maps emulate the territory that we navigate. Their evolutionary geometry shows that they are not the territory, and can be manipulated away from reality.
In a prior post, see link below, Rory Sutherland emphasized that we do not understand what we see, but that we see what we understand:
- “If you change the way people look at something (i.e. branding), you change what it means to them,
- if you change what it means to them, you change their emotional response; and
- if you change their emotional response, then you change their behavior, and their way of thinking.”
Llinás expands on Sutherland’s observation by showing that we understand what we can predict (i.e. McDonalds is “predictably not terrible” makes us understand the nature of the brand), and that bias (accuracy) as well as variance (precision) are key to valid predictions.
Enhancing Predictions (thus Understanding) with Stories in Six Words
Llinás work connects with many authors mentioned in earlier posts, connections that we will explore in future posts.
For now, we can make our own connections to enhance predictions and understanding, using a narrative device attributed to Ernest Hemingway, see link below. We can write a compelling story in six words to encapsulate predictions and understanding in the form of memorable heuristics.
For instance:
- Prediction error, same player shoots again
- Competitive deception, prediction failure, game over
What six-word heuristics can you write and share?
“CTRI by Francois Gadenne” connects the dots of life-enhancing practices for the next generation, free of controlling algorithms, based on the lifetime experience of a retirement age entrepreneur, and as the co-founder of CTRI continuously updated with insights from Wealth, Health, and Statistics research performed on behalf of large companies.