"Earth Quake in Kuchh....tremors in indonesia too of magnitude 4.5" read the morning news papers. Rajiv seemed a little disappointed after reading this. The numbers weren't BIG. It was the first piece of news that caught his attention that morning but soon he was turning pages searching for better stuff. In the 14th page there was an article about a child who lost her parents to the earth quake. He felt sorry for the poor child and wished he could do something to help her. So what kind of a person was he? Was he an indurate,cold hearted impenitent sociopath? or was he a compassionate,benevolent philanthropist? or was he just a confused soul ? What was it about numbers that his mind so effortlessly defied all tenets that have been carefully and relentlessly fed to it? What was it about detail that it evoked the right response?
Alvin Toffler in his Future Shock points out "the human mind can be thought of as a storehouse of images. A Snapshot of each and every incident of our life is stored as an image. The related images are grouped together to obtain a higher abstraction". Though this might not be exactly how the mind forms opinions, it serves the purpose of explaining Rajiv's behaviour. Before trying to identify the possible reasons for such a behaviour, it would be apt to try and answer the following questions. Considering that the mind has limited storage what happens when it runs out of space? What happens to the image when a higher abstraction is created? Are there any priorities? Are these images or abstractions static? Do the abstractions or images have some attributes?No one knows exactly, but, it seems most likely that they are overwritten but never deleted. They are overwritten by a higher priority image, the priorities being manifold. Most often the priority is the freshness of the image while it can be very complex at times. Images and abstractions do have attributes, based on which they are grouped. This grouping is used to create higher abstractions and also determines how we react to a particular situation. While the images themselves are static their attributes are not. The abstractions on the otherhand do not have any concrete form but are defined entirely based on the attributes and hence are not static. Attributes can be anything, every feeling that you experience when you think of an incident is an attribute. Images are powerful in the sense that they have the potential to change the attributes of other images or abstractions. This change might trigger an avalanche of changes all the way up to the root of the classification tree.
Now, how does a new image get recorded? What is the snapshot? Snapshot apart from having the visual image (most important or the frame when your mind was absolutely concentrated) also has the attributes. The attributes as pointed out earlier are the feelings we experience at the time of incident. Every feling that we experience has two components- the history of reactions as well as impulse. The impulse is the ability of the mind to generate new responses in the wake of new knowledge. The mix of these might vary from incident to incident depending on the intensity of impulse. The intensity of impulse depends on myriad other factors like the state of mind, the physical strain, available time, personal life etc... The new image is recorded at the bottom of the tree and it tries to percolate up the tree, stopping when it finds an abstraction of which it is a subset. An entirely new set of attributes might even force a new branch out of the classificaton tree (at any level.Even at the root). It might also create a new thread that reorganizes the abstractions in the light of the image.
How is the history information obtained? This is obtained top down. Immediately after we percieve something a thread gets activated in the mind. This thread tries to match the current image to the existing entries and returns the attributes once it finds a match.Then the immediate question that follows is - Why is then our reaction to the same kind of situation different at different times? Apart from the impulse factor the most prominent reason for such a behaviour is the vicissitudeness of the definition of a match. The factors that influence this change are the same as the ones that leverage the intensity of impulse. Depending on the influence an entry at different levels of abstraction is returned each time. Additionally a record of the results is kept that helps in further searches.
Alvin Toffler in his Future Shock points out "the human mind can be thought of as a storehouse of images. A Snapshot of each and every incident of our life is stored as an image. The related images are grouped together to obtain a higher abstraction". Though this might not be exactly how the mind forms opinions, it serves the purpose of explaining Rajiv's behaviour. Before trying to identify the possible reasons for such a behaviour, it would be apt to try and answer the following questions. Considering that the mind has limited storage what happens when it runs out of space? What happens to the image when a higher abstraction is created? Are there any priorities? Are these images or abstractions static? Do the abstractions or images have some attributes?No one knows exactly, but, it seems most likely that they are overwritten but never deleted. They are overwritten by a higher priority image, the priorities being manifold. Most often the priority is the freshness of the image while it can be very complex at times. Images and abstractions do have attributes, based on which they are grouped. This grouping is used to create higher abstractions and also determines how we react to a particular situation. While the images themselves are static their attributes are not. The abstractions on the otherhand do not have any concrete form but are defined entirely based on the attributes and hence are not static. Attributes can be anything, every feeling that you experience when you think of an incident is an attribute. Images are powerful in the sense that they have the potential to change the attributes of other images or abstractions. This change might trigger an avalanche of changes all the way up to the root of the classification tree.
Now, how does a new image get recorded? What is the snapshot? Snapshot apart from having the visual image (most important or the frame when your mind was absolutely concentrated) also has the attributes. The attributes as pointed out earlier are the feelings we experience at the time of incident. Every feling that we experience has two components- the history of reactions as well as impulse. The impulse is the ability of the mind to generate new responses in the wake of new knowledge. The mix of these might vary from incident to incident depending on the intensity of impulse. The intensity of impulse depends on myriad other factors like the state of mind, the physical strain, available time, personal life etc... The new image is recorded at the bottom of the tree and it tries to percolate up the tree, stopping when it finds an abstraction of which it is a subset. An entirely new set of attributes might even force a new branch out of the classificaton tree (at any level.Even at the root). It might also create a new thread that reorganizes the abstractions in the light of the image.
How is the history information obtained? This is obtained top down. Immediately after we percieve something a thread gets activated in the mind. This thread tries to match the current image to the existing entries and returns the attributes once it finds a match.Then the immediate question that follows is - Why is then our reaction to the same kind of situation different at different times? Apart from the impulse factor the most prominent reason for such a behaviour is the vicissitudeness of the definition of a match. The factors that influence this change are the same as the ones that leverage the intensity of impulse. Depending on the influence an entry at different levels of abstraction is returned each time. Additionally a record of the results is kept that helps in further searches.
Even if I Consider rajiv's reaction to the first incident only, I won't call him a psychopath(are u already calling me one?). It all depends on the snapshot that gets fed in. To explain this more I would identify the four factors (that I have already discussed) in the context of this incident. Whats the impulse? Here its not reading about a calamity but reading some sensational news. The intensity of impulse depends on the time between the previous sensational news that he had heard (of same or different kind) and the current apart from the other factors that I have listed (which in this case is difficult to determine). What is the history information? History information is not the feeling that he had towards such incident(at a higher level) but the magnitude of sensationalism that he had experienced previously. There might be a branch further down which represents the sympathy or concern he had for the people who were affected. But in this case the equality condition was satisfied at a much higher level. The factor that terminated the search early might be time. This seems to be acceptable reason considering that we are impatient to get hand on some interesting news as soon as we pick up the news paper, though this might not be the only one. The second reaction which seems more normal can again be explained on the same lines. The impulse factor is less dominating in this case, considering that he is more relaxed( has more time..also more patient..) the equality search might go further down. Also it might be the case that his mind is no more looking for sensational news and hence takes a different branch at the root itself.
This should explain Why, the name of a particular community evokes hatred instantaneously and yet you condemn atrocities against the same, Why, sometimes caste,religion seems to be worthless notions and why at other the reason for your existence, Why, your mind ping-pongs between Ayn Rand and Karl Marx, Why, you make and break friends or enemies,Why, the favourite pastime of your childhood is no longer your favourite and why you feel the way you feel now, after reading this.
P.S: I think i have taken a very bold step of proposing a new theory on the working of mind. It might turn out that it is nothing but bullshit. But if Newton was allowed this luxury for three centuries...may be I deserve three hours atleast ( the time it took to write this blog)
When a word is bold and italicised it indicates that its a generally percieved notion which might not always be true or which is not the only truth.
11 comments:
Read the blog, good that you have atlast written what you wanted to from a lot of time. Once again an excellent use of language, dont you tell me again that you have lost touch with english.
As usual i lost track of it in the middle and had to get back to the start to get the point you were trying to make.Initially i was confused on the words Abstaraction, root etc.
What i liked the most was the way you explained rajivs thought process using your theory. It would have been excellent if you had carried on by relating the theory in detail with feeling towards caste and other vacillating ideologies and thoughts.
As we used to say, the commercial aspects would have been improved if the theory was explained with the incident while you were proposing it itself, as the readers might get mind boggled in the middle. Anyway thats for commercial aspects only. But i felt that the quality of the blog was extremely good.And i could see the three hours you spent.
ANd the idea of anti virus was good on my blog was good.
why are you also adding precautionary statements or self defensive or i should say statements to dilute the mind of the reader in the P.S.
Now I understand,what gives you an oppurtunity to brag about your hit count. Generally, people with their grey cells in place would not understand the blog in the first go and hence revisit it until they do. The number of revisits required to understand definitely tends to infinity and hence leaves you with many more oppurtunities to continue bragging about your hit count.
@annonymous
Well u forgot a simple logic that you can always scroll up to begin reading it again.... :-)
wow!! that is great confidence!! what made you think that anyone could afford consecutive attempts to understand it without a loooooong coffee break!!! :-)
@anonymous
They can leave the window open....if at all they plan to read it...AGAIN :-)
What makes you think that your blogspace deserves a tab in the browser all the time consuming the reader's resources(though infinitesimally small)..
aaaah!! caught you!!
Now i understand the reason behind your silly replies forcing another string of not so silly comments!! The motive is to
"INCREASE THE COUNT OF COMMENTS TO YOUR POST!!!" :-)
Having figured that out you still post a new comment..! great :-P .... these comments apply to all other posts...why don't u post similar comments on other posts too :-P
The ability to communicate what you wanted to tell the reader is profound in the blog.But the theory is a mysterious one taking some time to digest in the reader's mind.
Thanks...I agree that its bit mind boggling...I should have used more examples to make my point ...but that would have made it much longer than the expected size of a blog post.
good one dude..excellent use of language to communicate ur thots..keep going..
kewl one....really capable of gettin published in a psychology book. real logical.keeping all the cases in mind,but takes quite a time to digest..was just goin thru the kartheeks blog..and got to see urs....keep penning/.....keep livin life..:)
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