RE: [-empyre-] for example -

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

> Hi - a couple of questions here. If the mind operates according to
> algorithms - what decides between them.

Why does anybody do what they do? To describe the mechanisms of our decision
making processes would key, primarily, on psychology, not on math or
computer science. How do we decide what we shall do when presented with
situations in which each alternative prompts a multitude of reactions? But
there are processes going on continually in our decision making, aren't
there. We all have our psychic needs. For approval. For recognition. For
companionship. For intimacy. For understanding. Etc. Pathological behavior
is often described in terms of the hold a particular narrative or small
number of narratives have on one's processes. An obsession is a process out
of all conscious control. A need for approval, for instance, become
unsatisfiable by virtue of a controlling narrative in which approval is
never granted. S/he needs approval or recognition because s/he gets so
little of it and can never have it because their controlling
narrative/daemon/process forever denies it. And so needs the recognition and
approval all the more, like someone starving.

But such an obsession may be present as well as other more fulfillable needs
and stabler controlling narratives. The situations that we associate with
the development of mass murderers, for instance, can also give rise to
people able to avoid that particular path.

Considerable complexity can arise in the interaction of a small number of
processes. What decides what we do when our response is a function of
several processes? Iterative multi-variable functions can be quite complex
and 'chaotic', can't they.

Do you think this is entirely
> determinative?

Not sure what you mean. This? Determinative?

> If not, there would be a set An of algorithms, and then
> perhaps a set of meta algorithms etc.?

There's our thinking. And then our thinking about our thinking. And there
can be thinking about our thinking about thinking, like now. But mostly
there is our doing, isn't there. And there's our thinking about our doings.
And that is crucial in a conscious life, isn't it.

> Second, I tend to think like Penrose - that quantum mechanics plays a
> strong role in mental operations. This would include probabilistic
> phenomena - much as the dream is a restraining and reorganization of
> presumably random neural firings, so might thought itself turn on such
> a reorganization - which would have considerable 'wobble' built into it.

I would think 'wobble' would be a healthy part of any model to describe our
muddle.

ja