I miss my friends in Utah. Thankfully I have found amazing people here too. For example, John Watson, Ryan Cadwallader, and Stefan Knudsen. I feel dang privileged to be in the study group of the most upstanding and bright individuals at this school. And I'm workin' a deal that if I learn to golf with them, they'll come to the desert and learn about all that with me. Haven't quite got the consideration worked out...OK, John Asked another question: basically, how does the mind work? Is it governed by a single central processor, or are there thousands of "central processors" throughout. See post.
Here was my answer:
Well, I'm pretty sure that my mind has no single CPU to govern everything. To illustrate, I have a real difficulty listening to music sometimes because later, like when I go to bed, thoughts will be racing around with that same song playing in the background. It happens with everything from REM to Arcade Fire to The Dimes...not so much with Ben Arthur or Classical music. The music is somehow lodged in my stream of consciousness in a strong way, apart from everything else that is going on... In those situations it takes alot of mental effort to "unplug" whatever cable got stuck in there. The frustrating result is that I am kind of an insomniac.
I often tell my wife that I think my brain is just a ton of loose cables floating around in a sea of memory and imagination, sprinkled here and there with strong determination. I do my best to keep a good amount of cables near that determination part. All the time cables are connecting two points and I have a stream of thoughts as a result. Simultaneously another cable might make a connection, adding to the flow of thoughts. Like a flute adding to the music of a violin, except my thoughts are way more garbled, and less pretty. Its more like playing CNN at the same time as CSPAN. Maybe. Then when the thoughts slow down a little the cable will disconnect and float off to be of use somewhere else. Sometimes with music it doesn't disconnect.
The REAL problem is that there are way too many cables going around, and whne lots of them randomly connect all at once, my mouth tries to fill in the gap of being THE central processor. While a kamanjah might sound good in a proper setting, it doesn't belong in the Turkish March.
Maybe I should also compare it to a partly cloudy city powered by photovoltaics. All the time sunlight is peeking through in spots and powering up different stuff, which in turn interacts with the other parts of the city in all sorts of ways. Like through email, cell phone, even the neighbors AC, or whatever you can do with the burst of electricity. Those interactions are what I'm talking about with "cables." The people (or "things") on each end of the connection are memory and imagination, etc. I feel like my thoughts result from those interactions.
So the question is, why do I not have complete control over those clouds? Or the people in the city for that matter? I know I have some, even possibly alot, of control. I can focus pretty heavily on what I'm learning, especially if it excites me. Or get me to tell a snowboarding or climbing anecdote and my thoughts are nearly 100% focused. No sunlight on any other part of the city, just that fun memory and a little bit of exaggerative imagination. But most of the time other stuff will pop in unexpected. Sometimes alot of it. That is kind of a stinker, like when I am noticeably distracted from a one on one conversation.
Rude.
Anyhow, I am somewhat proud of my city. I try and keep it clean, and I try and keep it growing in a good way. Unfortunately there are too many parts out of repair, Like my Japanese section. Or Arabic. I've got a ton of Japanese people in my city, all throughout making connections to a lot of things. But the "Little Tokyo" branch of the city library is in complete shambles, not having seen even a new magazine in years, let alone good attractive reading material. Same with the restaurants and even the homes. Sadly most of the good folks that used to live there have up and left. One day I hope I can renew that neighborhood, and get things poppin again. But in the meantime they have spreac out, and now they have neighbors who love mountaineering in the North Cascades, or who can recite the Restatement (second) on Contracts like nothin. (I wish there were more of those guys... actually, I wish there was even one of those guys.) When those neighbors have electrical interactions, interesting things happen.
I don't know if I have main processors for certain things, maybe more like somewhat thicker cables that are harder to move around so they generally stay in the same area. Like typing. My fingers are moving over the board repetitiously, and they've been doing that alot lately. But to me its not like a processor operating off of files pulled into the RAM. Every once and a while I use my pointer finger to hit the "p"...Where the heck does that come from? I think it is my cable drifting a little bit. That cable is pretty heavy, but not impossible to move.
Consider my Japanese population, interspersed everywhere. Is each person a processor, because they can make connections in all their various ways? Or are they physically all in the same spot inside my head, so that area of grey matter "is" the central processor? I dunno.
If I had to subscribe to one of your two views, I would choose the blue pill. I mean number two, the "many CPU" theory. But that is entirely based on my own thought patterns.
Crazy question, and an even crazier answer. haha. Since you just came over and released me from the obligation of writing more I'll end. Hope this journey "through the looking glass" was along the lines of what you were thinking.
Art