Way back in 1989, one day, I knew this was Intuition.
Abraham Thomas
KNOW YOURSELF PODCAST Listen each week, to one podcast. Based on practical self improvement principles. From the insight of an engineer, back in 1989, about the data processing structure of the human mind, recognizing, filtering, storing patterns, without stopping. Patterns of guilt, shame, fear. How to silence painful subconscious patterns and become self aware.
For centuries, science has asked "What causes emotions?" The answer is revealed, when you view your mind as a pattern recognition network. Special organs within your limbic system recognize the patterns of events in your life and respond. Their signals trigger emotions, which instantly decide your attitudes and modify your behavior. Aroused emotions trigger restlessness, excitation, and agitation, preparing you for action.
Anger and fear are such emotions. Anger is blind to consequences and lashes out. Fear ignores successes and withdraws from confrontation. Despair envelops you in gloom, switching off pleasant avenues of thought. It is possible to still such negative emotions and be ruled by your common sense. Freed from fear, anger and despair, you can become calm and savor the positive emotions like joy and laughter. The Buddhists believe this state of mind to be one of the highest levels of consciousness.
Can An Algorithm Be Controlling The Mind?
I am not a physician, but an engineer. Way back in 1989, I catalogued how the ELIMINATION approach of an AI Expert System could reveal a way by which the nervous system could store and retrieve astronomically large memories. That insight is central to the six unique new premises presented in this website.
These new premises could explain an enigma. A physician is aware of thousands of diseases and their related symptoms. How does he note a symptom and focus on a single disease in less than half a second? How could he identify Disease X out of 8000 diseases with just a glance?
First, the total born and learned knowledge available to the doctor could not exist anywhere other than as the stored/retrieved data within the 100 billion neurons in his brain. The perceptions, sensations, feelings and physical activities of the doctor could only be enabled by the electrical impulses flowing through the axons of those neurons. The data enabling that process could be stored as digital combinations.
Second, combinatorial decisions of neurons cannot be made by any entity other than the axon hillock, which decides the axonal output of each neuron. The hillock receives hundreds of inputs from other neurons. Each hillock makes the pivotal neuronal decision about received inputs within 5 milliseconds. Axon hillocks could be storing digital combinations. It could be adding each new incoming digital combination to its memory store. The hillock could fire impulses, if it matched a stored combination. If not, it could inhibit further impulses. Using stored digital data to make decisions about incoming messages could make the axon hillocks intelligent.
Third, combinations are reported to enable a powerful coding mode for axon hillocks. Olfactory combinatorial data is known (Nobel Prize 2004) to store memories for millions of smells. Each one of 100 billion axon hillocks have around a 1000 links to other neurons. The hillocks can mathematically store more combinations than there are stars in the sky. Each new digital combination could be adding a new relationship link. In this infinite store, specific axon hillocks could be storing all the symptom = disease (S=D) links known to the doctor as digital combinations.
Fourth, instant communication is possible in the nervous system. Within five steps, information in one hillock can reach all other relevant neurons. Just 20 Ms for global awareness. Within the instant the doctor observes a symptom, feedback and feed forward links could inform every S=D link of the presence of the symptom. Only the S=D link of Disease X could be recalling the combination and recognizing the symptom.
Fifth, on not recognizing the symptom, all other S=D hillocks could be instantly inhibiting their impulses. The S=D links of Disease X could be continuing to fire. Those firing S=D link would be recalling past complaints, treatments and signs of Disease X, confirming the diagnosis. This could be enabling axon hillocks to identify Disease X out of 8000 in milliseconds. Eliminating improbable (unrecognized) prospects to arrive at a possible (recognized in the past) solution powers the powerful inductive logic of the mind!
Worldwide interest in this website is acknowledging its rationale. Not metaphysical theories, but processing of digital memories in axon hillocks could be explaining innumerable mysteries of the mind. Over three decades, this website has been assembling more and more evidence of the manipulation of emotional and physical behaviors by narrowly focused digital pattern recognition. It has also been receiving over 2 million page views from over 150 countries.
What
Causes Emotions?
Do Emotions Have Control Over Your Behavior?
If,
suddenly, you need to walk on a plank a hundred feet above ground,
your fear will kick in. That emotion will instantly suppress
even your elementary abilities. Fear will stiffen you into
immobility. Even slight movements will appear to be life threatening.
Instead of walking, you will desperately want to lie down and grip
the plank.
Within
the blink of an eye, you will have lost your normal capacity to walk
a few steps on a plank. Mysteriously, a single emotion will have
modified your entire behavior. Every expression on your face reflects
a specific family of emotions. Even blind and deaf children show
similar facial expressions. Human behaviors and facial expressions
are mirrored in the gentle caress of love, or the sharp scowl of
anger.
What
Causes Emotions? -
Are Emotions Just Visceral Responses?
Initially,
scientists discarded emotions as being irrelevant to the rational
modern mind, a throwback from primitive times. It was Charles Darwin,
who first suggested that emotions have a real world existence,
visibly expressed in the behavior of humans and lower animals. He
suggested that the existence of an emotion could be derived from an
angry face, or even a bad feeling in the stomach. In those days,
science viewed emotions as essentially bodily and visceral
responses.
What
Causes Emotions?
What Happens When The Viscera Is Surgically Removed?
W.B.
Canon disproved the idea that emotions were visceral responses. He
showed that emotions did not follow artificial stimulation of
visceral responses. Emotional behavior was still present when the
viscera was surgically or accidentally isolated from the central
nervous system. So, emotions existed, but they were not the churning
in your gut, or the knot in your stomach.
What
Causes Emotions?
Does The Stimulation Of Some Neurons Trigger Emotions?
Excitation
of certain parts of the temporal lobe produce intense fear in
patients. When other neurons are stimulated, they feel dread.
Excitation of other nuclei cause feelings of isolation, loneliness or
sometimes of disgust. Electrical stimulation of the septal areas
produced a feeling of pleasure for rats. The animals would self
stimulate those regions, till they were exhausted, preferring the
effect of stimulation to normally pleasurable activities such as
consuming food. Emotions originate as distinctive patterns of nerve
impulses, which also trigger neurochemical events.
What
Causes Emotions?
What Were The Early Beginnings Of The Nervous System?
The
Hydra was a primitive branched tubular animal. A net of neurons
between its outside and its internal digestive cavity responded to
any stimulus applied to any part of its body. That process enabled
the animal to vary its length, and use its tentacles to push food
particles into its mouth. Strong contractions expelled indigestible
material from the same orifice. The stimulus, triggered by the
recognition of touch, enabled those animals to approach, accept or
reject food and escape. Over millions of years, nerve cells learned
to recognize many more patterns, in addition to touch, to achieve
more sophisticated survival goals.
What
Causes Emotions?
Do Amygdala Signals Predict Possibility Of Pain?
The
early reptilian “nosebrains,” decided to avoid, or consume food,
by analyzing smells. Fear was another early control system, triggered
by the amygdala, an almond sized organ in the limbic system. It
stores memories of unpleasant experiences and triggers fear, when it
detects the possibility of a repetition of such experiences.
Experiments show that just an awareness of the possibility of a
painful electric shock activates nerve impulses from the amygdala for
rats.
What
Causes Emotions?
How Does The Body Respond To Amygdala Signals?
Fear
has a huge variety of nuances - alarm, scare, worry, concern,
misgiving, qualm, disquiet, uneasy, wary, nervous, edgy, jittery,
apprehensive, anxious, trepidation, fright, dread, anguish, panic,
terror, horror, consternation, distress, unnerved, distraught,
threatened, defensive. Nature has added more emotions to fear,
including sadness, disgust, contempt, curiosity, surprise, love,
pleasure, embarrassment, guilt, and shame. The fear impulses from the
amygdala increase adrenaline, produce shallow breathing, reduce blood
pressure, increase heartbeat and inject acids into the stomach.
What
Causes Emotions?
Are Some Emotions Accompanied By Bodily Sensations?
Your
body has systems, which recognize a range of feelings, including
sharp pain, burning pain, cool or warm temperature, itching, muscle
contraction, muscle burn because of lactic acid, joint movements,
soft touch, mechanical stress, tickling, flushing, hunger and thirst.
These bodily sensations trigger impulses to the insula in the limbic
system. This organ is also activated by social emotions - love and
hate, lust and disgust. Thus, you experience a variety of feelings
along with your emotions. Our literature describes those
emotion/feeling combinations as cold calculation, hot temper, or warm
love.
What
Causes Emotions?
Are Drives Strategic Emotional Signnals?
Competing
emotions are continually generated beneath your awareness. Each
emotion initiates within your subconscious mind a drive,
with a remembered strategy - an inherited or acquired way of coping
with problems in life. Anger generates a drive, which navigates
aggressively. Fear triggers a defensive strategy. Laughter achieves
relaxation of the stresses of life. Jealousy makes the system attack
competitors. Love makes it caring and protective. Each emotion
focuses the system to take actions, which follow its strategy, These
emotions compete with each other for the control of your mind.
What
Causes Emotions?
Does A Single Family of Emotions Control Behavior?
Your
moods shift because an intuitive
decision making process,
within your limbic system swiftly and continually switches control
from one group of emotions to another. At any point in time, a single
family of emotions rules, actively inhibiting conflicting objectives.
Love subdues the onset of anger. These emotions micromanage the
fluidity of your muscle movements, your facial expressions and the
choice and tone of your words. They exercise subtle and relentless
controls over the intensity and nuance of your every gesture and
spoken word. The ruling emotion also controls the access of the whole
system to its memories.
What
Causes Emotions?
Does Conscious Awareness Follow An Emotional Outburst?
The
famous experiments of Benjamin Libet showed that your awareness
follows a system decision. He studied subjects who voluntarily
pressed a button, while noting the position of a dot on a computer
screen, which shifted its position every 43 milliseconds. The exact
moment of conscious awareness was the noted moment of depressing the
button. Each time, Libet had also timed the beginning of motor neuron
activity in the brains of his subjects. Libet discovered that
awareness occurred 350 milliseconds AFTER the beginning of motor
activity. The system always acts and then informs you. When angry,
you will act in anger, before you become aware of your action.
What
Causes Emotions?
How Large Is The Wisdom Of Your Mind?
The
DNA codes in your body contain codes, which instruct your living
cells to construct your fingernail, or your eyelash. Scientists
reported that if those codes were packed into 500 page books, those
books will fill the 450 kilometer long Grand Canyon fifty times over!
Over millions of years of evolution and a lifetime of experiences,
your system has acquired an immense cache of knowledge. The system
also provides such massive
stores of inherited wisdom to
the nerve cells, which manage your emotions.
What
Causes Emotions?
Do Emotions Record And Recall Your Memories?
Emotional
impulses trigger myriad finely controlled patterns of behavior. They
access from memories the exact knowledge needed for survival. An
animal lurking in the bush carries the memories of its encounters
over a lifetime. If it feels uneasy, the system extracts memories of
the sensory indications of danger. If it is fearful, it gathers
memories of escape routes from the battle zone. Its anger extracts
memories of muscular responses to battle. By controlling system
access to a focused set of memories, emotions restrict your vision
and control your response. When you are angry, you will feel
convinced that you have every right to be angry. Fully justifying
itself, the system blinds you to any other viewpoint.
What
Causes Emotions?
Are There Higher Levels of Consciousness In Your Mind?
The
mammalian organs in the limbic system generate partisan emotions.
They carry you into troubling levels
of consciousness with
blinkered views. Which one of these levels represents the real
you?
A
fundamentally rational intelligence, your human heritage, occupies
your prefrontal regions (PFR). They generate the viewpoints of a wise, common sense viewpoint, untrammelled by emotions.
The
Buddhists have experienced this perspective. “You will not see
something is good or bad, whether it is a beautiful picture or a very
ugly picture, a sweet sound or an ugly sound. When you act like this,
your mind will stay calm.”
What
Causes Emotions?
Does The Nervous System Also Carry Noble Urges?
With
the calm wisdom of PFR in charge, searing emotions cannot hijack your
system. Free of troubling competition, you can benefit from special
purpose circuits, which generate pleasure from a flawless line, the
fragrance of a flower, or from harmony in music. When you are calm,
nature adds to your delight by not inhibiting the innate surges of
neural impulses to your pleasure regions, which enable you to cherish
a work of art, or enjoy a lilting song.
What
Causes Emotions?
Can You Practice The Positive Emotions?
The
Buddhists added value to their lives by cultivating noble emotions.
They practiced the experience of compassion for nature by imagining
the feelings of a bird, or an animal. Great actors invoke a range of
emotions on stage. If you glare at a person, your words will sound
hostile. Try it. You can learn to cultivate positive emotions.
Amazingly, if you look at an opponent with compassion, his faults
will suddenly appear to be pathetic failings.
What
Causes Emotions?
Which Emotion Is Nature's Masterpiece?
Nature
has coded
sophisticated emotional behaviors into
your neural network. The incredibly specific behavioral outcome of
each emotion is recorded in our culture and literature. Love
transforms your behavior as it seeks to cherish and protect. Love is
patient and kind. Love suppresses the emotions of anger,
irritability, jealousy and rudeness. Your needs are subdued to give
way to an awareness of the needs of your loved one. Love forgets and
forgives past wrongs. Love persists in spite of problems, keeping
faith in the loved one. Love does not gloat over injustice and is
happy in the victory of truth. Nature's pattern recognition processes
have crafted an incredibly high standard of behavior within the codes
of a single emotion, to impel the best in mankind.
KNOW YOURSELF PODCAST Listen each week, to one podcast. Based on practical self improvement principles. From the insight of an engineer, back in 1989, about the data processing structure of the human mind, recognizing, filtering, storing patterns, without stopping. Patterns of guilt, shame, fear. How to silence painful subconscious patterns and become self aware.
Jordan Peterson - Happiness
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The Hard Problem Of Consciousness