The Big Bang... from explosive energy distribution to particle formation. Thoughts.

Every explosion has an overall energy release, and that release can be graphed in both the energy level of individual particle reactions vs. the volume of said particles. I suppose the energy release would be amplified by density, that is to say it would be higher towards the more 'compact' centre of the explosion (particle reactions against similar particle reactions).

I think the big bang was the same way. Most of the energy release into our universe was around the same level, but lessened towards the outer reaches of the 'explosion', meaning that the energy/quantity release (on the above chart model) would (also) look something like... one half of a bell curve.

I'm persuaded that this energy release resulted in an immediate particle formation, something almost exactly like a fermion-pair generation what we are able to observe today, but its epicentre was at much higher 'quark' energy levels. So, if a majority of individual energy releases were around the same level, their volume would drop off to either side of this 'energy centre'. I imagine that energies higher than this 'explosion level' would be much 'rarer', yet lower-energy releases much more 'common' and decreasing in strength with distance from the centre of the explosion... the graph would look more like a ladder leaned against an olympic ski jump ramp, wouldn't it? I don't see how it could have been any other way, as, if the energy release were all at the same uniform level, the fermion pairs would simply annihilate each other perfectly.

So, continuing this thought in this vein, what we would want to concentrate on is the highest volume of energy release: on one side, a sharp drop-off in higher-energy releases, and to the other, a more gradual decline (resembling one half of a bell curve). Now, imagine the very tip of this volume/energy curve. The energy release, even though it was simultaneous, would be in many different energy levels that are more and more mixed away from the explosion centre.

When we observe an isolated fermion pair formation, the particles annihilate each other almost immediately after their formation (as they are perfectly matched and the closest thing to each other)... but what would happen if there were (insert unimaginable amount) of simultaneous different-energy level fermion-pair formation around a single point? It is totally imaginable that the product of different fermion-pair formations could be closer to each other than their own 'genesis twin'. These 'closer' fermions, if opposing in charge, would try to annihilate each other instead of their respective twins.

So take this model, and apply it to a 'varied-energy' explosion... what if the two closest fermions weren't matched? They would still try desperately to annihilate each other, but since they aren't matched... I'm not so sure of the exact dynamics of this, but what seems most to make sense is that two opposing fermions within a certain energy bracket will partially annihilate each other, yet if it tries to annihilate another fermion outside a given bracket, it won't succeed, and be 'bound' to it in an eternal struggle (until later events disturb it).

Now, let's just concentrate on the dominant energy level release, and the one just down form its 'annihilable bracket'. What would happen just after the energy release (massive fermion pair formation) is that a given number of those fermions would annihilate each other, but another part would 'cross-bind' in the way described in the previous paragraph.

Now, we get into the dynamics of 'why matter?', because these leftover 'mismatched' fermion pairs would equal each other and be divided in respective charge - a negative higher-energy bound to a positive lower-energy, and this would have an opposite twin - thus these could annihilate each other, too, but that's not what happened.

The Why of Laughter.

I was listening to a podcast earlier ("Very Bad Wizards" - always a pleasure, excellent work guys, thanks ; ) about humour in general... the types of humour, what's funny or not, when things are funny. It was an enlightening and fun experience, so if you want to listen for yourself, you can find it here.

But this is something that I'd been thinking about since decades. Black humour, nonsensical humour, slapstick humour, what do all these have in common?

I do know that when the brain is tracking 'movement', depending on the 'anticipation level', our subconscious will be trying to 'predict' what will happen next. I think this is the 'link' between humour types: most all types of humour 'break' from the pattern that we'd normally expect.

Whether it is humour or not would (I guess) depend on the circumstances, but I think it comes down to our relation with the source of the humour: in most cases I can think of, it is a relaxed state of trust. It could be another person, a television... and add to this the idea (IMHO) that our decision-making consciousness is almost a persona in itself (that can be trusted/mistrusted by our subconscious). So, from a position of trust, our senses get a description or circumstance that breaks from 'the predicted', yet, if the result is inoffensive in nature, we may even see sense in it. A sort of "I wasn't expecting that, but it fits." The "ha ha ha (how wrong I was to think that way)" may be just... sociological conditioning, an expression of a... "you got me"?

Going on to the part about "humour we don't find humorous at all", we may simply just be switching off the 'prediction/anticipation' brain function because we simply aren't interested in knowing what happens next, and that would also cancel any further reaction.

Just my two cents on a (still) mysterious subject.

Beyond the Village... again?

Correction: Before Critical Thinking, 'Value Judgements'

I'd like to revise my earlier position on critical thinking: thought is a two-level process, and critical thinking is an 'activated' second level above the base 'weighing and comparing options' function that governs most of our decision making. I had made it sound earlier as though critical thinking was our entire thought process.

I like to call this emotion-led 'weighing and comparing options' process 'value judgements'. As I noted earlier, every memory we store is associated with an emotional response neurone; this is how we determine the 'value' of that memory (otherwise any object or experience, a loved one or apple, would have the same 'weight' in our minds). When confronted with a situation, the mind a) recalls similar situations (and attributing elements) then b) 'weighs' each memory recalled by the strength/resonance of their respective signal against each other; the most 'positive match' and 'appropriate' response will win out, which will lead the brain to send the signals/chemical responses needed for the decided course of action.

This is not critical thinking; it is a 'comparative memory' process. It includes even 'new' situations, as data from sensory input becomes a comparable memory as soon as it is stored, even temporarily.

Critical Thinking from an Evolutionary Point of View

I keep referring to the hunter-gatherer period in which we spent most of our evolution. Much of our time then was spent foraging and hunting, and our clan camps a place to keep and protect our young in larger groups (against nature); without the latter, there would be no point in even having a village. So, most of our time was spent outside of its protection, one-on-one with nature (and at war with other clans).

The latter situation was where critical thinking was most important and most-used: it was a survival tool more than a key to inventiveness. It allowed us, instead of following the same patterns again and again (like 'dumb' animals), to create that 'other option' that would allow us to break our predictability and 'trick' our opponent (that is stuck in their 'known behaviour' thought-process, unable to read our minds)... and this is the main reason we survived as a species through the ages, the ability to break a predictable pattern.

This tool is practically useless in a village (clan camp) environment. Only the results of it could be brought back there in the form of stories that could be remembered and later imitated by other clan members. People then did not share or pass on information for the simple ideal of posterity, but in the aim of survival, and the techniques passed to others were probably dictated by the evolving environment and survival needs therein; it is possible that many techniques faded to oblivion when no longer required by nature or war, which meant that human life was an e'er-evolving, often repeating, state of constant adaptation. 

Agriculture to the Cities

This basic evolution still more or less holds true, but our invention of agriculture changed everything. Critical thinking was reserved for that (and even then, it evolved very little; choosing the best grains from each crop is not a process of invention) and the defence of a growing village (and methods of attacking others). Once needed for everyone who affronted nature, critical thinking was practiced by a very few, and these either became the village/city leaders or were allied with them, and the 'common villagers' were left to imitate and 'value judgement' reason within the educative limits defined by the leadership.

Even this holds true today. The only change was, probably after centuries of this follower-imitating-leadership behaviour, an idle group of ambitious yet idle observers discovered that a human could be dependant on leadership for even value judgements; like critical thinking, these also were survival tools for an individual against nature, but in a protective village environment, even these became optional. In short, the former 'protect and educate' village environment that, in hunter-gatherer times, was only applicable in early life (before an adult was obliged leave and fend for itself against nature), became a lifelong process for those who gave up, or were prevented from, making value judgements for themselves. All religions and totalitarianist regimes have their root in this.

The Enlightenment through Today

The invention of writing, and widespread literacy, changed everything yet again. No longer was authority and education the responsibility of a select few (who could only pass it on orally), but people could share information amongst themselves, and judge it for themselves; still, the prevalent authoritarian system, and societal pressure, prevented people from doing this, although these roadblocks to personal, individual enlightenment has eroded slowly over the years. The few critical thinkers practicing science and critical thought in general could record its experimentations for posterity (and validation by anyone able to think for themselves from later generations)... this too was a game-changer, which is why so many libraries went up in totalitarian/religion-lit flames throughout history.

The invention of the internet, though, changes everything yet yet again. We are in the age of information, but this time, an information that can only with difficulty be banned or burned. For the first time in human history, absolutely everyone has not only access to this information, but the invitation to assess and test it for themselves: doing so requires not only the will to make value judgements for oneself, but also critical thinking. With access to this information, a growing human will develop these abilities naturally; this explains the recent surge of activity in those seeking to make young humans disbelieve, and even fear, the possibility of thinking for oneself. 

We are at a crossroads of two extremities today: Either fundamentalist 'uni(non)thought' wins out and the distribution of information is controlled or banned, or, for the first time in human history, humans will be using their 'outside the village' abilities, once again as individuals, to judge their own actions, and each others', for themselves, within the village confines.

If the latter were to happen, we will be becoming a real, less leadership-'thought'-dependant, post-modern society. As we once did against nature, once again we will decide rationally (not through peer-pressure imitation), but this time as both individuals and a group, what's best for ourselves.

Super-Gamma EMW to Fermion process (or vice versa)

(Interlude music)

I think I've got how the most basic fermions combine initially, but I'm still fighting with my brain over the the 'load balancing' part once they're combined... the two same-charge fermions somehow transfer their differences between themselves... and the combinations would be of opposing charge (thus would annihilate themselves anyway). There's something utterly mathematically simplistic about this, but it is just beyond me... 

Discussion is essential to clarity - 'everything' in a nutshell.

Just putting this here for posterity... I've never been able to express it so succinctly before.

"Something's holding that quark-energy in place, otherwise it would just dissipate. There's a force resulting from the 'finding balance' struggle between the two (that something and the energy it's binding), and gravity is its residue.

IMHO, of course."

"I had an idea that the centre of every quark was a rip in the spacetime continuum... a gateway to 'absolute nothing', and a quark is energy that is bound by its trying to get 'back' to that zero state. Kind of like... (scratching head) Flushing pasta down the toilet? LOL - but the strands would become interlocked, forming a ring that would keep the whole from being flushed down... I -have- to think of a better analogy ; P

But if I were to go further down the rabbit hole, that 'zero point' would have to be something in itself, but it would make even more sense (complete sense, IMHO) if 'our side' matter was matched by something on 'the other side', and that force was -across- that zero point... like a fermion pair trying to annihilate each other. And that force would be gravity."

"My idea goes like this: energy (EMW) levels above a certain level (super-gamma, probably) make a spacetime rip, making its path change from a straight one to a 'swirl' around the rip. Only EMW's of a certain frequency can have any stability (think a wobbling, rotating top - 'wrong' frequencies would rip themselves apart (and be sucked in)), but 'right' frequencies, stable, form matter. And the different 'right' frequency levels determine the size of the resulting fermion."

"I have absolutely -no- education in this domain, but I've always been processing ideas to see how things 'fit'... and I like 'seeing' patterns, too. Today I see everything as a 'zero point' and a parabolic energy curve away from it... well, two parabolic curves opposing each other, one energy and the other, the 'pull' towards that zero point.

It even makes sense to me that the 'strong force' and the 'nuclear force' are just variations of gravity... if you follow even Newtonian physics all the way to quantum level, the 'pull' close to that fermion-level 'zero point' must be ENORMOUS... and so must be the energy. We already know that the 'binding energy' of atoms is enormous (A-bomb, etc), but take that up one level to quarks... wow.

And taking that even -further- to the 'fermion pair annihilation'... Tyson spoke of 'event horizons' where one of the pair would escape, but what of energy behaviour in a quantum soup: what if one half of a pair 'bound' to another (different-frequency) fermion before it could annihilate itself against its same-frequency opposite?"

(comment indicating equivilence principle)

I can see how the math works out for the equivilence principle, but I have a problem with its application, especially in questions of time dilation... time does vary with the strength of a gravitational field, but although the math says that that time variation also applies to an object in accelleration (because equivalence principle), but don't see sense in that - I'm of the persuasion that time dilation (and gravity) can only be calculated relative to a mass itself.

The math works out because of the -difference between the two objects-. A mass on its own might as well be standing completely still, its mass (and gravitational pull and time dilation at its surface) constant and unvaried -until it encounters another-. Only -then-, upon collision, do the different velocities/masses count - I think it is an error to put all of that 'inertia' into an object if there is no other to compare it to, and even more of an error to say that time affects that object because of that (hypothetically) increased 'gravity'.

But that's just my humble opinion.

Link to the original discussion.

The Beauty of Being Wrong

Just a short entry today after witnessing one-too-many pointless 'saving face' back-and-forths: this for me really defines intellectual honesty, and shows whether one is really using their critical thinking abilities or just putting on a show of doing so.

We all shape our communication from the knowledge we have managed to accumulate until that point in the conversation where we have to use it. We all have varying degrees of trust in different points in knowledge: some may be empirical, some may be hearsay, but we don't really think much about this distinction when we are tapping it. A conversation should be a great occasion to test that knowledge, yet more often than not I see it used as an occasion to 'show' knowledge as a badge of stature, and any questioning of it is seen as an offense.

This is a sure sign that the person speaking has created an 'illusion' of themselves that they are presenting just as much to themselves as the person they are speaking to... almost a third person, some sort of mystical 'authority' that should be revered and defended without question. And this creation is also a result of wanting to cater to whatever (we think) another person 'wants' or 'needs'.

Yet we can't see into other minds, nor can we 'know' anything with absolute certainty. All we have to operate on is 'to the best of our knowledge', and if a conversation is to have any intellectual honesty, the knowledge of both/all parties should be open to (and even begging) questioning and testing. I guess this is what we'd call 'constructive conversation'.

If I am unsure about an element of knowledge I am using to make a point, this should show in my emotional display, and should be an invitation for someone other to provide a better solution if they have one. If a better solution is provided, it is not an offense - au contraire! If their point is valid and, better still, tested, they have actually increased my wealth of knowledge through their experience, making me a better person... what a gift!

Memory/Emotion/Critical Thought in the Human Brain

The brain is amazing. Seemingly complicated, but amazingly simple in its function: input, recognition; test, accept, reject; and finally... combine and create.

Above is an fMRI scan of the axon paths through the human brain. Axons are neurone connectors: to reiterate earlier explanations, every neurone has many receptors (dendrites), but only one output (axon) to carry the neurone charge to another neurone... if it fires. Whether it fires or not (and to what degree) is the result of the sum of input it receives from other neurones.

The network of neurones behind a single memory is a complicated thing... not only are there the neurones forming the memory itself, but its connection to 'inhibitor' and 'accelerator' neurones that will affect their relation to other neurones, namely in the later 'conclusion' part of the thinking process. To make things simpler, I've eliminated all those secondary (yet capital) connections in my illustrations, to show just the process result.

The above is the simplest of memories: empirical memory. First off, your brain will decide for you whether an event is even worth remembering, and if it is, it will be linked with the emotion that made it seem 'important', a link that will be traded off to the neurone used to permanently store the memory (if the brain deems it important enough). These emotion connections can be trained by further 'matching' input from empirical... or 'trusted' sources.

These 'test types' are capital to the human brain. Even before we became rational creatures, we were mimicking ones: whereas 'lower' creatures had to rely on empirical testing for memory 'validation', our ancestors learned to copy the behaviour of 'similars' who had already tried and tested the concerned techniques and circumstances. Unless trained, the brain tends to ignore (and even reject) any information not coming from anyone in the 'similar', or 'trusted' category.

Yet we only 'recognise' or 'match' things already in our memory. If we've had experience with a red ball, and the brain deems it important enough, it will be one of the things our (supposed) subconscious 'watches out for' in our environment. If it is detected, the 'recognition' trigger will be accompanied by the memory's associated emotion (playing with the ball, for example, as opposed to being hit on the head with it) will be triggered too. If at first the emotional 'importance' of each memory may seem quite stark and distinct, this will become 'muted' with repetition ('lesser importance') and other associated/more important events.

Now enter critical thinking, the 'extra level' that makes us human. It's that region of constantly 'slow firing' neurone region of the brain that, when activated, will 'test' existing memories against each other to create a third 'possibility' that can become a 'memory' of its own: if a) a rock is heavy and b) a muddy slope is slippery, therefore c) a heavy rock on a muddy slope will slide. Untested, the new idea will generate but a vague 'warning, watch out for this' emotion attachment, but if someone having that thought later sees that rock slide (and avoids it to survive), that thought becomes an empirically confirmed fact that can be related to others (with that 'warning' emotion) until they can empirically test it themselves.

Yet consider the experiment: if a) All Terriers are dogs, and b) all dogs are animals, then c) all Terriers are animals. This is an exercise concerning only the mind (and communication with other minds) and categorisation - it cannot be tested empirically, and can only be 'confirmed' by the emotional reaction (understanding, approval or not) of the person receiving the idea. Yet it uses the same survival-tool technique as the first example.

I mentioned earlier that emotions can be trained. In the empirical world, this is a clear-cut affair (with, say, an initial fear reaction to fire dulled by an education in its uses, and experience with them), but when it comes to ideas, it all depends on where the ideas come from. Without critical thinking, the origin of an idea is just as, if not more, important than the idea itself. If a trusted source says that circumstance a A will result in A, and you repeat their lesson and get a positive response, then the same tells you that circumstance A will result in B, you will attribute that same emotional 'reward' to both lessons, even if they are contradictory. 

Yet to the critical thinker mulling over circumstance A, they may weigh it against other circumstance/criteria/memories to conclude that, in fact, circumstance B because of A doesn't make any sense. The very act of this consideration removes the 'confirmation' emotion dependance on the teacher, and if the result of the reflection is tested empirically to a conclusive result, it may dampen, negate or even convert to 'warning' all former emotional connections to the source of the information. But the concrete conclusion of this exercise is that the emotional reward becomes a personal one. 

It seems that once one experiences this personal conclusion/reward for the first time, it seems to 'validate' for the brain the utility of the critical thinking technique as a whole. I guess this is the 'switch' I was trying to locate in my earlier posts on this subject.

Dispensing with the Moral/Thought Dictate

In my earlier post (today, I'm feeling quite brain-fart-y this morning), I described the emotional reward we get for learning lessons that have no physical nature. The very act of 'recognising' a pattern already triggers a reward in the brain, but seeing this recognition in another human seems to add a secondary, stronger effect: a negative reaction from that other human should move us to adapt our emotional reaction ('this doesn't work here'), and a positive reaction would doubly reward and confirm that pattern (as 'acceptance' also means 'survival' to the human brain). This is what we'd call 'morals', but it can also be called 'adapting to new environments'.

As a human has first to rely on his existing memory/emotion cocktail to judge the new environment, what it does next is based on its need for survival: if the situation is dire, and doesn't match any existing patterns, a human has to use these to do its best to determine a course of action in order to survive; if the situation is not life-threatening or challenging, the human has the privilege of choice: either remembering the situation or problem for later analysis, or simply dismissing it and forgetting about it. In a real-life alone-against-nature situation, the brain has no choice but to rely on reason: it will decide if a situation is good for it or not, and adjust its neurone network accordingly; yet if the brain is presented with an idea not represented in reality, if it is not dismissed, it will try to 'make' it real by imagining it, and will attempt to make the same adjustments.

No matter how we name them or talk about them, our basest instincts are around self-preservation. In situations that involve physical things, decisions are empirical and obvious, and 'working methods' are rewarded and categorised 'good for survival', but when it comes to untested new non-physical ideas, how does the brain decide if a non-physical idea 'works' or not? The choice here is simple: trust your own judgement, or trust a more experienced someone else's, but first, trust your own ability to choose between the two.

The last choice is everything. If you don't think yourself able to 'know' or to 'decide', then you are have no choice but to rely on someone else's judgement, meaning that you are dependant on that 'trust tree' I mentioned in my last post. And if an experience doesn't 'match' something 'taught' to you by anyone in your trust tree, depending on the level of danger, your brain will either dismiss the experience or remember it as something 'dangerous' (only 'confirming' the earlier mimicked 'lesson').

So for anyone who can't or won't rely their your own judgement, anything, anybody, or any idea originating from 'outside' that programmed sphere becomes a sometimes very scary 'unknown, can't judge, beware' category directly linked to our emotional, instinctive sense of self-preservation.

This is what both religion and totalitarianism tap into. Both divorce from a human its innate ability to judge the world for itself, make it impossible for a developing human to take its first steps in that self-sufficient state, and present (or impose) themselves as a sole recourse for any and all judgement in things both real and imagined as though they are equally "true". To the untrained and non-rational brain, they might as well be.

This limits humans not only in their education and decision-making abilities, it makes entire populations, instead of measuring themselves against reality and each other, rely on one source for all their decisions and guidance. Since that central source's judgement also encompasses what is dangerous or not, the people they 'lead' have no choice but to refer to their 'trust tree' for a 'measure' of safety, and view anything not originating from it as potentially dangerous. If their 'moral guide' dictates that something or someone 'not of theirs' is dangerous, the brain will adjust its emotional and neurone networks accordingly as though it was a real danger.

Now take two (or more) 'moral guides' competing for control over a single population trained to believe that they 'need' guidance: no wonder Christianity and Communism hated each other (and 'because atheism' my ass!). Now take two competing 'moral guides' who know that they can never persuade the other's following to follow them, so paint them as 'the enemy'. Now imagine that that central dictate is only educated in its own indoctrination methods and inept at everything else. Now imagine that the central dictate starts adjusting its dictates and descriptions of 'the enemy' only to accommodate its own wealth and survival... oh, throw some nuclear weapons in there, too. Scared yet?

But not only totalitarian regimes and religion are guilty of this: it exists to a lesser degree in advertising, Fox 'news', politics, and we all aid and abet this system by 'confirming' (or rejecting) each other's choice of dictate.

If we want to fix this, before all, we need to tell humans that they are able to make their own decisions and that their brains are wired for it from birth. We no longer have to face nature to 'prove' that ability, but that doesn't mean we don't have it and shouldn't use it, because, after a ~10,000-year long 'rationality-free' holiday, our very survival depends on it today.

PS: I just thought about someone's 'concentric circles of extremism', that the 'moderates' don't support what the 'extremists' do... f*ck that, ALL of them follow the same dictate, so it's the dictate's support or condemnation of whoever's action that speaks for all of them, since the dictate is the unique moral guide for all.

Decategorising motivation.

I've been going through acrobatics trying to apply brain function to existing definitions of human nature, but the latter shouldn't be used to describe the former; these contortions shouldn't be necessary, and are in fact quite counterproductive to understanding, even my own. Instead we should be taking the brain function and categorising according to that: our brain function is the motivation that drives a behaviour, yet that motivation, even if it has the same source and goal, somehow becomes a 'different thing' between (social) topics.

Our brain's most basic function is 'recognising' situations and dishing out the 'right' chemicals (emotions) as a reaction to them: defensive and active for danger, and passive and soothing for reward, and our survival depends on our brain matching these correctly. Yet this recognition needs to be educated: in our first moments in the outside world, the only 'safe' situations we recognise are those we already know from the womb: the warmth of mother. When we see mother trustingly and fearlessly associate with others around her (namely father), our definition of 'safe' will spread to them as well. And the 'tree of trust' will spread to whoever they trust, and so on and so on.

That's just our most primitive 'danger detection' mode. Added to that are the lessons trusted people teach us: we tend not to accept any lessons from people not in this category, and although we may remember those 'lesson attempts', we will not integrate them into our 'knowledge repertoire' until we think about them ourselves at a later date - if we ever do - or until that person somehow later becomes part of the 'trusted' category. But still, if someone is not trusted as they give a lesson, they will not have a direct influence on our learning process.

In our younger years, if we are given an example of behaviour to imitate, we can only judge the 'success' with which we accomplish this imitation by empirical evidence (does the square peg fit in the round hole? No. The square one? Yes!) and the (emotional) reaction of the person making us do the exercise. I doubt that we even consider why we're doing that exercise in our younger years, we know only that we have to imitate 'older proof of successful survival trusted figure' in order to survive ourselves. Sometimes the lessons we are told to imitate, like learning words, have no physical aspects that we can confirm ourselves: we know only that, should we imitate a sound successfully, other humans will understand and provide an emotional response that is more or less the same from person to person. Yet, at a young age, we don't consider the why of those words, we know them only as successful methods of expressing our emotion and well-being, and the desires for and fears of the material things that effect these.

But as we grow older and the scope of our attention grows wider, we're going to notice functioning things and the behaviour of other humans (trusted or not), and we may want to try them out for ourselves without any prompting or guidance. For whatever reason, if a child chooses to act on their curiosity, their reward can only come from themselves.

This last bit is what intrigues me. In our society, it hard to tell what motivates curiousity and a desire to try (new) things out for oneself. Yet it is very easy to understand in a 'do or die' situation... survival is the 'reward', and if we have never encountered that situation before, we will educate our emotions to respond 'accordingly' if we survive it.

You see, in describing this basic function in this context, referring to my earlier post, we're talking about both critical thinking and morals here, or "recording an emotional response after testing". But it's more than that: this function is used in all aspects of our lives, but it is named differently for what motivates its use.

If we were to draw a diagram of 'human nature', we would have categories such as 'morals' and 'critical thinking' and 'learning' and 'feelings', but what we seem to be doing today is taking a single brain function and adding it, individually, as a separate entity, into each category. Instead, I propose making that common function a unique central 'thing', and linking the other categories to it.

Morals: Independant Thought?

Morality is a very individualistic thing: it is an 'internal conclusion' that affects our personal interaction, as individuals, with the world around us. Morality is a balance between emotion (instinct), memory (examples of other humans, etc.) and rational thought; it's the mix of all three that makes us human and individuals.

Without rational thought, if a situation requires an immediate reaction, we will search our memory for a similar already-learned experience as a guide: if one is found, our emotional reaction to that will decide our actions, and if there is none, a panic ('fight or flight') reaction ensues.

Yet with rational thought, almost in parallel with the above process, we are able to 'calculate' the situation beyond 'knee-jerk' instincts of self-preservation: our brain can compare how one remembered course of action may be better than another, it can consider an action's effects on the surroundings, on other people and even what future consequences those actions will have. Neuroscience shows us that, if our brain decides that the rational conclusion is 'better' than the instinctive one, it will override it.

Yet many in a religious or totalitarian regime, at least the followers, have no use for rational thought: their actions are based on a 'punishment or reward' reaction to situations shown (and often only 'explained') to them by someone else, usually a 'trusted leader'.

In everyday interactions, if a situation or someone's answer 'matches' with something a follower was taught, the emotion attached to that memory (what he was 'taught to feel') will dictate their action: if they get a match with something in the 'good' category, their brain will give them a chemical reward and permission to continue the action; if it is in the 'bad' category, they will 'reject' the situation or their (instinctive) defense mechanism may be activated; if there is no match at all (and they don't feel in danger) there most likely will be no reaction at all - that 'deer in the headlights' look.

What the above paragraph really describes is our childhood learning process. When our frontal lobes (where neuroscience shows us that rational thought and 'morality' are seated) have reached maturity in late adolescence, our brain (well, the model of it promoted by evolution) normally expects us to start using it, but somehow, in many, this 'switch' never happens.

Mimicking lessons that promote self-preservation and/or personal reward is not 'morals'.

Critical Thinking: an Art we traded for Agriculture.

In years before agriculture, man lived in smaller groups where skills were most likely not divided amongst its members. This would mean that an individual would have to have a complete skill set to survive, and be able to process and overcome the never-ending variables that nature threw at them: this was critical thinking. Humans then had a simple choice: use it or die.

Neuroscience has recently shown us that the brain is pre-wired (but developing through adolescence) so that any cortex neurone has the potential to connect to any other, directly or indirectly, at any distance, in the brain. We would not have this nerve structure if evolution hadn't promoted it as a 'successful' model.

Below I will try to explain how we used to use our brain, and compare that with how we use it today.

This essay contains some references to neuroscience: Please click here to show/hide a short description about how neurones and neurone networks work.

A basic neurone basically resembles a cell with coral-like 'arms': its multiple 'receiver' arms, dendrites, project at all angles from most of its circumference, and a single slender 'sender' arm, the axon, usually much longer than dendrites, can extend to connect to another neurone's dendrites through axon terminal branches of its own. Most axons are very short, but even if one extends past another neurone it would like to connect to, it can sprout a terminal 'branch' anywhere along its length.

Basic structure of the human neurone

Most of our cortex neurones reside in an outer layer that we call grey matter, and they are immobile once 'placed' during brain development. Below this (in a layer towards the interior of the brain) is a layer devoted to carrying the longer axon arms carrying signals between neurones in different parts of the brain: these axons have a myelin sheath that is thin and almost transparent if the neurone is unused, but this grows thick to better protect and strengthen a neurone's signal when it is used often; the myelin's whitish colour gives this area of the brain its name, white matter.

fMRI scan of White Matter (axon connections) between distant neurones in the human brain

Only very recently was it discovered that these axon arms connecting different regions of the brain extend, in a pattern much resembling a map of Manhattan, to all extremities of the brain, allowing almost any cortex neurone the possibility of connecting to another even distant one (and other deeper centres of the brain).

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The brain is 'wired' for critical thought from birth. Thanks to recent (f)MRI and PET brain-scan technologies, we can see how different regions of the brain are linked together, meaning that any neurone in our cerebral cortex has the potential to connect, either directly or indirectly (through other neurones), to any other.

The question we have to ask ourselves is: Why are our brains that way? If we had never had use for the extensive neurone-connecting abilities of the human brain, why did evolution promote that model as 'successful'?

If we look back at our evolution, we'd see that we spent most of it, hundreds of thousands of years at least, as hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherers lived in small groups, moved with animal migration, and lived in caves and temporary shelters; they were practically one with nature. I would imagine that each individual would have to have a complete survival skill set, as tasks don't seem to have been divided between community members as trades in those days - perhaps between the sexes, but there is little proof supporting that idea, either.

Anyhow, these skills had to be taught to younger humans: Hunting and gathering for everyday survival, as well as the dangers that represented wild animals; I'm sure these lessons were quite strict, as any deviation from them would be a threat to tribe survival. Medicinal knowledge and theories about the origins of the elements and other natural phenomena were probably practiced and passed along by a select few tribe members. In all, the 'unexplainable' aside, the methods they passed through the generations were tried and true, almost a science in those times.

A human that must fend for itself against nature to provide sustenance for itself (and eventually its family) would at least have to be close to maturity in body, so we can assume that the time until then was spent on education. Yet this education would be worthless if the young human didn't break the bond with the rest of the tribe and forage out for himself for a first time; when in his group of 'trusted teacher' tribe members (and he probably, by instinct, feared anyone else), he depended on them for approval or disproval of his imitations of their methods, but eventually he would have to test them against nature with only his survival as a judge. The 'walkabout' is an example of this still existing in Australian aborigine tradition: take what you've learned (from your elders and ancestors), use it fend for yourself, or die. The switch to critical (independent) thinking was not a choice then, it was a matter of survival.

Yet before that initiation, if an information has only been tested through imitation against a trusted member's expression of approval or disproval, the human brain can only categorise it (with other similar information) with a link to the emotion generated when judgement was given (by trusted member, and most likely linked to (emotional) information connected to trusted tribe member themself); this is completely at odds with the context of a real-life situation.

Here's an exercise for the sake of example: consider a task that you repeat so often that it has even become mundane. Can you remember who taught it to you? Now consider another subject that you learned but have had little-to-no experience actually using. I'm sure you still remember its teacher quite well.

When a young human sees an animal in a 'real-life' hunting situation for the first time, it becomes an actual goal (and means for survival), everything about his lessons changes. Place yourself in the same situation as the young hunter: you're about to embark on your first one-on-one with an animal, and your lessons have to relate to ~it~ (not dear teacher), so thoughts about your education process are not the first thing on your mind. What you are experiencing now is ~yours~ (and you may at first feel afraid at this, which will only heighten your senses and accelerate your processing): see how the animal parts the bushes as he runs into the forest; your brain will make a direct link from that observation to the size and direction of that animal (amongst other conditions), and when you enter the forest in the right direction to actually see the animal again, that earlier connection will be labelled 'success' and the 'teacher approval' filter will be needed no more. Did you lose the animal again when you entered a clearing? Notice that smell, note the wind direction, and follow it, and again, if successful, your connection will be rewarded and 'confirmed'.

That night when you dream, you will re-enact those events, making the new connections that 'worked' even stronger (added axon terminal arms, dendrite arms, and myelination), and should you encounter the same situation the next day (using those neurones again), the connection will become stronger still. Any slight variation to those circumstances will add additional information to the established links, making a 'hunting' neurone network that is your very own creation, your tested experience alone. One can imagine that with a lifetime of experiences such as these (in all methods of survival), the complexity of our neural networks must have grown great indeed.

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Enter agriculture. This invention, only 12,000 years ago, flew in the face of over ~200,000 years of evolution and tradition. No longer was a human at odds with nature, as it needed stray no further than the boundaries of its habitat to collect its needed nourishment; many 'old' lessons about nature and survival were no longer needed, no longer given, and no longer tested.  Community size grew, and the work required by agriculture was divided between its members; it was no longer required to have a full survival skill-set to earn one's sustenance. Repeated tool-use skills in a sedentary environment requires much less critical thinking than the ever-changing circumstances of nature.

So, even though agriculture reduced the skill requirements for survival, the human brain was still 'wired' to handle them. And even though the human brain was wired to make direct inter-neurone 'conclusion' connections of its own (as a requirement for survival), it no longer encountered the circumstances nor the motivation to do so.

Yet because of our evolution and instincts, even in village (agricultural community) life, central leader role models remained, and were promoted to important places in society. Fewer were trained to brave the dangers of 'outside the village' (and these often became leaders), and even fewer had the occasion to test those skills. So from then, rumoured dangers, because untested, remained in the 'feared unknown' category, and directly linked in the brain to the 'authoritative' person who spoke of them. I imagine that over the years those stories, because they were untested/untestable, grew increasingly fanciful, and that the person telling them became an increasingly central village figure. This is probably how religion began.

So let's fast-forward to today, a mere 12,000 years later. This time period is next to nothing in the scale of our evolution, so our modern brains are practically unchanged from the hunter-gatherer model evolution favoured, yet with our cities protecting us from both the elements and nature, we are even ~less~ required and motivated to make the transition to the independent critical thinking that 200,000 years of evolution prepared our brains for.

The timing of that transition can change, too. In pre-agriculture days we had no other choice but to remain in a protective environment with our untested learnings until we were physically strong enough to affront nature on our own, but today, thanks to information technology and the (non-dangerous) nature of the things we learn, we can test any idea or information anytime we want in our lives... if we want to.

Understanding the Theist Mindset.

This is perhaps already obvious to many of you, but I had a bit of a 'release' revelation a few days ago; I'm much less daunted by theist discussion thanks to it. Sorry if this sounds pompous, but I'd like to share.

'Pigeon Chess' is the best analogy I've heard so far to describe an atheist/theist discussion, but I kept wondering about ~how~ a theist manages to deny/dismiss fact/evidence even when it's right in front of them.

If you think to our education, we spend the first part of our lives building our minds by mimicking a few trusted 'authority figures' who are supposed to show us what's good and dangerous in the world (and being doubtful/in fear of anyone/anything else), but eventually we gain enough experience to start making conclusions of our own from what we experience around us.

Religious people are just people who have never left the first stage. Just as children, they focus on their 'authority figures' for (emotional) reward and punishment; they just 'blank' any information from any other source as 'wrong' or 'bad'.

I can almost compare a 'follower' education to training a lab rat: the reward is food if he does the 'good thing', and punishment is an electric shock if he does the 'bad'. Eventually the rat will grow to fear certain things and appreciate others, even without an actual reward being given. When released into the world, he will regard with incomprehension (and perhaps fear) anything different from the environment he was trained in, and run to his 'education environment' for safety if he can. Trained rats together will behave the same way, but as a pack.

The key here is emotion: the 'reward' for a theist comes directly from a leader approving a followed behavioural pattern, whereas the 'reward' for a thinker comes (first) from ~himself~ when he achieves understanding and uses it to a successful result/conclusion.

So, for a theist, any information not from certain sources or outside their programmed behavioural pattern ~doesn't even register~ if they are not approved by their leader/fellow followers, much in the same way 'god' doesn't register for atheists.

For religious leaders, all that matters is that their followers continue to focus on them for education, reward and punishment; one could even argue that the content of the doctrine used to establish/maintain this dependancy system... isn't even important.