Neural Nets, Nihilism, and James

I'm feeling a little frustrated at the moment because when ever I have a good idea for a quick post on here it quickly grows into something bigger as I start to realize all the facets and insightful connections to other ideas for quick posts. I suppose this is a good thing really, but it's overwhelming to have so many ideas and try to keep track of them all. I've tried to make a point lately to write at least a few notes as soon as inspiration strikes me instead of trusting that I'll remember later. I've made it a fairly high priority to do this even when I have other stuff that I "should" be doing...like sleeping or school work.

I'm gonna try not to make this a long post cuz I have more important ideas to work on...but I will mention (in brief) one of the ideas I had the other day....

I've been thinking a lot about the inner workings of the mind (a fairly common topic to occupy my mind). I've had lots of ideas lately about how artificial intelligence might work. An interesting side effect of developing my theories is that I am coming to a better understanding of why people are the way they are. For example, I believe I understand why close-minded people like James exist. In all fairness, we are all close-minded to some degree (we have to be). Here's my explanation:

Our mind is based on the neural networks in our brain. When we learn something, some connections become stronger. The more these connections are used the stronger they get (because they are apparently important enough to be used often). When you are first trying to learn something, these neural pathways are rough and not necessarily very efficient. For example to get from point A to point B may require a lot of thought the first few times. So these neural pathways find shortcuts to skip over the gritty complex details of logic and get right to the point. In this way, getting from A to B becomes more intuitive, logic is no longer required.

Now, people like James have spent so much time thinking about the same thing (in this case, god) and relating everything to it. They may have used logic to make the initial connections, but logic has since been abandoned. All connections are so strong that all other bridges have fallen to disrepair. Furthermore, because every other idea or thought they have is so closely tied to one core assumption with such a strong neural connection, if that assumption were to fall, their entire reality would crumble with it.

I would be the first to admit that I have my share of closed-mindedness (likely to be addressed in future posts). However, I like to think that I am pretty open-minded relatively speaking. Consequently, I imagine that few concepts in my mind are very deeply rooted, and few shortcuts in reasoning exist.

This feels accurate to me. I often feel like I am slow, but thorough in my thinking. I don’t jump to conclusions quickly. Every issue is a complex one that must be considered from many angles. People like James see the world in black and white, good and evil. Everything can be easily categorized. I sometimes wish that I was a fundamentalist Christian because it makes the world seem much simpler and manageable. There’s a simple answer for everything. It is so much more difficult to be a nihilist because there is no firm ground to stand on. Ideas and concepts can change on a whim and there is an overwhelming amount of self doubt. Oh how wonderful it would be to have the simple outlook of James and to be so deeply rooted and confident in the binary good and evil of the world.

But it’s simply not an option for me. Why? Perhaps due to my own closed-mindedness and deep roots in science and logic. I really don’t have many answers, only questions that spawn more questions and mostly go unanswered. It leaves the neural pathways in my mind chaotic, yet flexible.

Anyway, this is pretty long already and it was only meant to be a quick side note. I better cut it short because I have other work to do and more important posts to make. This is not the one mentioned in the previous post, that one is about my rocky relationship with writing and it may be some time until I get it finished because it is one of the ones that is growing into something bigger than I originally intended. But that’s a good thing.