transfer to     THE  WAY THE MIND WORKS

THE  WAY THE MIND WORKS                 (I.J.S. Vol. 7 p 15-21)

In order to get the most from your mind you must understand how it works.  If you DO understand it, then you can give it orders and generally it will do what you ask it to do.  If you do NOT understand it then you will ask the impossible and it just won't work- it will fail.  If you do not know what to ask your mind and how to ask it you cannot get the most out of your mind.  Oh, it will bumble along and Sometimes, even frequently,  it will work for you, but more often than not it cannot do what you want because what you want or ask of the mind is something that is in conflict with the way it CAN operate.  Most people wishfully ask for "something for nothing" which is impossible and get the "nothing".

Your mind is very powerful, but you must pay in mental effort for everything you ask for, and most of the time it is "payment in advance" with rare occasions where you get something "by grace" meaning you did not have to work for it.  Nature grows wild fruit and sometimes you can just pick black berries that grew wild. But if you consistently want black berries you better plant a blackberry bush and tend it a bit rather than depending on the wild berries.  Your mind is exactly the same.  If you want consistent results you must take care of it and culture it.  If you learn to think, you may find thinking a real pleasure. To quote "Twenty percent of the people think that they think,  five percent or the people really think, and eighty percent of the people would rather die than think".   The real fractions are more like 40% 2% and 90% however.  The difference between the 40% and the 90% are the third of the people who believe that they want to think, but are not willing to put any effort into it and want results, without effort; reward without payment in self responsibility.

There are at least four major parts to the mind.

CONSCIOUS

Short term memory, feelings

UNCONSCIOUS

Filters input

Controls learned "automatic" actions like walking, balance

Long term memory

Values  - conscience

Inhibitions

Intuition - creativity

Subconscious

Eidetic memory  - really

"ID"

                  NEW creative work,

"Pain and pleasure" Sex drive (libido)

Instinctive

semi automatic  like breathing, eye blink

automatic  like heart beat, digestion, reflexes

The CONSCIOUS part directs what we do, and is what is thinking right now.  If I say “I think therefore I exist" the part of the mind that does this is the conscious "I"

SHORT TERM MEMORY:  The conscious part is connected to the unconscious by way of a short term memory, and apparently we get things into the unconscious ONLY by way of this short term memory. It has about 20 "bins" in which to store memory items and this memory is erased every night while we sleep usually.

FEELINGS The conscious mind also receives "feelings" including pleasure and pain directly from the subconscious, and frequently acts upon them without really thinking things out.   Our values and intuition pop up in this same "feelings" box for us to consider. Some would call it intuition or the conscience, but it does more than just that.  There is a communications link in the feelings box into the conscious mind that we need to encourage. The more the conscious mind filters "feelings" to make rational decisions, usually the fewer feelings come. The little man in the feelings box can be discouraged easily - after all he operates ONLY on feelings- so we need to keep him happy by telling him how much we appreciate his input even or especially when we ignore it.

UNCONSCIOUS;  The unconscious mind is made largely of a long term memory. and it also acts as a filter for the senses and actions.

FILTERS:  We receive so much input that we would be totally inundated if we tried to process it all.  So the unconscious mind filters out and throws away more than 90% of all we sense - abstracting only what it thinks is "important" in what we hear and see - retaining only the "abstract" of what was really input.  We do not really hear the fan in the background- the radio in the next room, and other "background noises”, ­the unconscious filtered them out.  We do not try to "see" every blade of grass- or for that matter even a lawn unless we are interested in that lawn at that time.  We DO see the beautiful bare baby boy in the corner of our eye since the unconscious person is also interested and wants a better look. Or we do see the letters on this page- it is what we are reading, but we do not see the binding margins and other distractions.

            ACTIONS: Similarly we do not think about walking- our conscious mind says get up and go to the refrigerator,  and the unconscious mind (uncle) tells the body and feet what to do to accomplish that complex action. A baby is still learning the set of commands that accomplish this, but once "uncle" learns the proper program for the feet they are off and running.

LONG TERM MEMORY: The long term memory is operated by a "little man" (girl) who stores and retrieves our memories.  Getting things into the long term memory is limited by three things: ITEMS: there are only about 20 items in the sort term "in box" RATE (number per hour),  and TIME attention span, time allowed on any one subject

This little man (woman) also who works on problems for us.  He/ she is a really GOOD problem solver, if we just leave him alone to do his thing. and when he has the answer it pops up in the "intuition" box.

            RATE This little "guy" also is our filing clerk, putting away all the memories we throw into "temporary memory" - or short-term storage. He does have a limited filing capacity,  and thus we file only about 3 "items" an hour on the average.  This is the "rate of memory transfer" from short term to long term memory. You can increase this from a typical 3 per hour to 4 or 5 just by asking for it. BUT you also must leave him alone to do his job and not keep piling other work on top of that order.

Just by good training he also can easily be trained to be more efficient and file 6 or even 7 items per hour,  even up to about 20 items with real practice- but you must help him by a bit of pre-sorting, pre-labeling as to WHERE to file it (Oh this is another fish tale so it goes "with fishing stories" like another specific similar one), and not ask him to retrieve unrelated stuff while he does his job.   This is called "making memory links" or “associative" techniques.  It also makes it MUCH less likely that he will loose things. Your memory gets better as well as faster.

He is a downright messy secretary- he may file for example a fun evening with a friend at a fine restaurant under the friend's name, the name of the restaurant, under what you ate, or what you did, or anywhere else that seems likely to him.  He just wants to find a pigeon hole for the data. And he may or may not make all the cross references you might like unless you specifically open all those links yourself and set them up yourself. Once you do that it makes loosing the memory much less likely since opening any or those files will find the reference to that memory and it will pop up in the short term memory window letting you know he has successfully retrieved what you wanted.  This repetition with minor variations on a theme and association with other past events is a way of making sure that your memory is properly stored- it reinforces the memory by repetition and cross links it to other memories so it will not get lost.

            TIME: In addition he has an "attention span" and only wants to work for so long on one job. This is usually about 50 min.  for most adults. That is why classes of 50 min. work best. For children it is less, 20 min. is typical for a 7 year old,  and for college grads usually much more, about 2 hours. There is a trick here however that will beat the game.  You just tell him "This is different" and he will happily go on his way with this "new" topic as if it were a totally new subject.  Thus what one person would lump under "chemistry", I might subdivide into inorganic, instrumental, physical and organic chemistry as if they were different things and get 4 attention spans for them PLUS, if you know the limit exists, all you have to do is tell him to be patient and stretch it, and he will.  With practice this can be doubled easily and run up to a factor 10 to 8 hours if you work at it.

            NUMBER Finally he also only has so many “Items” available in the temporary short term memory- and IF you stuff more into the file than it will hold, they simply get totally lost "on the floor" and swept out with the other garbage that night when he closes up shop for the night and he goes to sleep. Again there is a way to beat this game- we just lump many items into a memory string. and the whole mess goes into memory (cross indexed even) as one item.  A memory string of one item for one person might fill up all of the short term memory in another person that tried to remember many-associated individual things.   By linking them we really make life easy for him  and he repays us by finding these memory strings easily .,and completely, with high fidelity. More on MEMORY CHAINS LATER.

If we want to talk to the "little man/ woman in charge of this operation we can do so.  He/she (I will use "he" here after- girls read "she") rarely receives direct orders, and may be very surprised at any direct communication, but he is also pleased we finally got around to noticing him and usually will respond quite well, and try his hardest to do what we wanted. Most of the time he files data away and occasionally hears us ask a mental question such as what was the name of that big blond gal/guy I met last week- or other indirect hints to go retrieve stuff from the files. But a direct "PLEASE DO THIS OR THAT" is rare. But if you DO ask, then make sure he understands what you want, and then quit bothering him and let him  go paw through the files and find it.  If you keep telling him he drops the search, comes up and listens and then in disgust gets back to work since all that happened was to distract him.  Eventually he rushes up and tosses the memory into transfer memory and rings the bell "HERE IT IS BOSS" and indeed there it is. If you ignore it at that point he may just pack it back into the file (in total disgust), so you need to grab it with enthusiasm when he does produce it.  Even say “Thank you!”

INTUITION - CREATIVITY - VALUE JUDGMENTS - and CONSCIENCE

VALUES and CONSCIENCE   There is a label "filter" of information from the unconscious to the conscious,  and this filter that sometimes gets in the way of proposed action has been set up to apply value judgments to the information "this is good" "that is bad"-"if you do' THAT you will he embarrassed beyond belief - and this choice is better than that.  This filter center can be put out of action by a moderate quantity of alcohol,  and at that point people cease to know right from wrong, - they loose their sense of values, and also loose their inhibitions.

CREATIVITY this is a "right brain" located function that receives the "revelation" of new concepts and new ideas- it is the conscious source of creativity. I can not say exactly HOW it operates- the operations are in the unconscious, and this is the "output" register where the answers pop up, but It also is the source of what ESP there  is,  and is more or less opposed to the left brain  "logical" language or linguistic,  and math ability.

SUBCONSCIOUS:     The subconscious level is below the conscious, and it receives data from the eyes, ears, touch, taste and smell directly, and apparently stores it all without comment or processing of any sort to cut "noise".  This level has MASSIVE storage ability, and seems from all I can determine to be populated by a host of very active gremlins. They take delight in tossing irrelevant data from the file into the "dumbwaiter" and stuffing it into the unconscious and by that route it gets to the short term memory and conscious. But they also balk at helping the "uncle" little man at all except as they darn well please, unless forced to do so. This is where the ID comes in. The ID causes them to do what IT wants to achieve its own ends.

The Wizard of ID-  Deep down in the base of our brain is a "reptilian" like part which controls the automatic actions like heart beat, and knee jerk reflexes,  the semi automatic things like breathing, and eye blink and it has its own opinions and values, and will try to impose its basic values onto the rest or the mind. For example it may say I DON'T WANT TO MOVE AGAIN,  and will arrange feelings to force a wife to ask for a divorce for example rather than move when a job related move is required for a husband.  It will "fake" an accident (actually really causing the accident, complete with all symptoms) to put the person in the hospital and thus avoid some event it perceives to be totally unacceptable.   You can argue with this part of the brain- but it is VERY simplistic, VERY stubborn, slow, and responds only to endless repetition, it ignores logic generally,  and operates on feelings. - reward for actions.  But remember its rewards are VERY basic,  for example sex, or similar sensations. It does not respond at all to altruism, agape love, or similar higher order learned pleasure type stimuli. It learns very slowly (if at all) and is just about like a lizard or perhaps a bird - in term of learning. If you want to get its attention, try thinking about what you want to impose on it and masturbating to orgasm - or better yet having a helpful partner who will "do” you while talking about what you want to get to the ID- reaching climax as a "reward" for getting to the right conclusion - getting intense pleasure just when it gets where you want it to go, and reaching a conclusion you want it to reach.  Like Pavlov's dogs you will need several repetitions to convince it, it is "reflexive" - not logical. For example you might try something like the move to outer slobovia is going to be FUN-  FUN (orgasm) F U N! -- THAT will usually get the message through to the ID.  IF done just right, it may even grudgingly change its mind, and cooperate with the inevitable.  You also can convince it that the alternatives all are worse- a pain bad feelings type incentive.  If every time it considers some option and it feels pain it will also get the message, but beware as it will just as likely as not twist pain into pleasure rather than listen! Remember it is VERY basic and controls the definition what IS pain and what IS pleasure. This is where masochism gets tangled into the mind.

MEMORY CHAINS - MEMORY .STRlNGS, and the little man / girl in our unconscious mind.  As an example of a memory chain, let me tell you a story  - But first I want you to remember the following numbered list  of  unrelated items:

        1  Derby hat

2 Tiger

3 Umbrella

4 Window

5 Car (Ford)

6 Beach Umbrella

7 House

8 Alarm clock

9 Salami

10 Dummy (store mannequin)

         11 Elevator

12 Playing card – (Q hearts)

Can you tell me without looking what number 3 was or which number went with house?

Now I will tell you a little story.

            The first thing when I woke UP this morning I found to my surprise I was wearing my DERBY HAT.  A bit puzzled, I took it off and went to the shower (second thing each morning) and decided rather suddenly NOT to indulge this morning as there was a TIGER in the bathtub (2 sliding doors) shower stall !.  I ate and as I was leaving took the UMBRELLA from the triangular (3 sided) holder in the hall with THREE other umbrellas in it, but chose this one since the others had 3 snakes (think of the Medical profession symbol)  on them. As I approach the front door (an old fashioned 4 panel door with FOUR WINDOWS in an arch transom over the door)  and opened it I found a CAR (Ford) had run up the FIVE steps to the front door and I had to climb out over the hood of the Ford Car to get out.  IT was windy. I live on 6th avenue and as I watched several (6) men were being pulled down the 6th Ave. by the wind that was into a BEACH UMBRELLA that had opened up and was acting as a sail. I go up 6th avenue to 7th street, and there was also a HOUSE on 7th Street, being moved but blocking the whole street, also being blown by the wind. Moving by itself! and making a general mess pulling down electrical wires (7 of them in fact) .  Before 8 o'clock I must catch the #8 bus on 8 th street, as there is a rate change from 8 cents to a dollar then and an ALARM CLOCK sitting there by the driver ready to ring when it is 8 O’clock, time for the new rate.  I habitually go back to the ninth seat and this day must sit next to a man with 9 rather ripe smelly SALAMI’s which he persists in poking into my nose all the way to down town, where I get off at the 10 th stop on 10 th street.  AS I depart the bus a man in a store window knocks over a stack of 10 DUMMIES   in a row like dominos and they fall out through the window breaking the glass.  I usually take the elevator to the 11th floor of the building (office  number 1l-l2)  and the elevator today in useless, so I have to walk up the 11 flights of stairs (puff puff  11 free cuss words $A#$@*!). There is a playing  card  taped on the door (the queen of © which is #11 in the deck of hearts!) to my office (#I2 naturally )(The office klutz has next office #13 –boy is HE unlucky !) Today and I am puzzled a bit as to why that would be taped to the door, but I open it and go in      You get the idea. I have made a memory string to tie the things together It could easily go on with item 12 being say coffee cup and number 13 being anything absurd associated with the office klutz. We have set up the string to where we could add more items. 

With such memory strings we can take many items of unrelated data and call them ONE item for the purposes of storage.  There were three things I tried to do in this story- I tried to make it a running relationship sequence, I tried to make each relationships peculiar, VERY peculiar indeed, and I tried to make it into a "Dream" sequence that my mind would accept as possible even if a bit weird.   If we use normal or usual relationships, then it all gets lost and confused with all the other similar memories.  So we want weird things that are not likely to get mixed up with anything else.  Use Peculiar, but Possible, Relationships.

RELATIONSHIPS

MAJOR POINT: The mind remembers relationships easily, it remembers isolated  “facts"  only  with  difficulty.   So try to keep things in relationship format.  Some minds do not work this way- they want "rote" (rap) memory.  But this relationship preference is true of most creative minds, and anyone that is likely to have gotten this far in reading this.

CREATIVITY

THE LITTLE "man-/ Girl" who files things in the unconscious and probably is also responsible for a lot of (most of) the creativity has a libido that needs positive reinforcement frequently.  He/she will offer answers that you asked for. But if you do not seize them IMMEDIATELY and with enthusiasm he/she will grab them back. (harrumph!  if THAT is the way you feel about it!).  We will forget the goodies offered to short term memory very quickly, as they are coming OUT not going IN for long term memory-wrong way-  so I always try to write them down.  Since our little man girl is fickle about these new things and  is not likely to offer them a second time - or only under duress I must record them when offered.  So "gather ye rosebuds while ye may" - grab anything creative offered and get it onto paper so you can later feed it back to long term memory, for permanent storage. It is an error to try to stuff it back in without external memory storage (paper) as the mind does not like fast turn around.

This little  person   is NOT androgynous or neuter, and likes the same "sexy" things you do in terms of distractions - so let him look at "Playboy I Playgirl" or what ever turns you on as part of the reward for good service. If he wants you not to turn the page or STARE at that pretty girl, / hunk do so - look- oblige if at all possible  All too many people avert their eyes when someone looses swimming suit tops rather than taking advantage of the situation to "get an eyeful" - NUTS enjoy yourself!!

Intuitive answers.  This little man ~ girl can reach conclusions faster and with less data that in the conscious mind.  In fact he/ she (particularly SHES) can reach "snap judgments" from first impressions that save OODLES of time.  These are dumped out in the "feelings" or "intuition" file and usually cannot be defended on any logical basis.  Later we can come back an rationalize them, and perhaps even recreate the chain of thought that went into making the intuitive value judgment,  but on the spot all we can do  is learn to "pay attention" - keep records of successes and failures, and learn to trust (mistrust) these little quick answers. But generally don't discuss them, "BEING RIGHT TOO SOON IS SOCIALLY UNACCEPTABLE"  You can discuss this safely only with others who use this method. 

(So how do you determine this?   Intuition naturally!)

Null  A Logic brief description (in process)

                                     _

Non Aristotelian Logic, A , (Null A) includes multi-valued  and negative logic. Sherlock Holmes said eliminate what is not true and what ever is left, no matter how improbable must be the truth.  That is a form of Null A logic.

Aristotelian logic also is called by its later more complete development with the name of Boolean Algebra, i.e. yes no binary logic.  But some things are multi-valued, in fact most things are just that, multi-valued .  Red can be a pure monochrome like light from a  laser, but most red colors are broad band mixtures of several shades of reds. There are many complex mixes of reds, (or other colors) that all look alike to us. Taking a blue ball point pen ink as an example, making a chromatograph of typical ball point pen ink shows reds, blues, greens and a major mixture.

Human relationships and values usually also are multi valued.  Even when we have a precise means measurement such as cost in cents with which to experiment, - not often the case, we will settle for a range of acceptable alternatives.  Taking the price of a can of beans as an example, the quality factor alone may justify different prices. But examination of the prices of the same brand or of presumably exactly equal cans shows them being sold for a range of prices, and not always following the Ricardian maxim of lower price means higher volume of sales as other factors such as convenience also enters the value system.

Humans are multi-valued, and tolerate quite a range of values. In fact diversity is the rule, and diversity is in and of itself a value. We need diversity.  If everyone wanted the same thing, say black fords, we would not have any variability and no choice of options. In the example we would have only one type car available. As it is we have vans, mini-vans, pick up trucks, sports vehicles, sports cars, luxury sedans, hatchbacks, rainbows of colors, and almost endless options. If everyone values the same thing it would be a monochrome drab world indeed.  Thus we are inherently Null A creatures. 

Let us try to define what something is by stating what it is not. 

Aristotelian logic is a binary, two valued,  yes no  logic. It serves well, and the computers operate on that system. It was invented by Aristotle ca 300 BC but the most powerful exposition mid 1800’s was by George A Boole, and hence it is also called Boolean Algebra. It operates with And,  or,  neither, nor, logic.

Example if A is true and B is true then A and B will be true, but none of the other combinations will be true. The logic table below shows some of typical true (t) false (f) values.

A             t    t    f    f

B             t    f    t    f

A + B      t    f    f    f  (in logic + = both  or and)

Neither    f    f   f    t

Or            t    t   t    f 

This sort of logic excludes multi-valued logic.  THAT multi-valued logic is part of null A  logic.  It is not all, but a major part.

For now (lacking time and because of priority) I will refer you to the chapter headings in A. E. van Vogt’ s Null A  books (The World of Null A, etc.) and also refer you to Symbolic Logic by Susanne K. Langer as one of the better books – it is READABLE-  not a common factor in logic books as they tend to wander off into the world of “logic mastered” and leave the student floundering in a sea of syllogisms.