Mind As Mosaic

One of my most vivid insights during my first years in training as a Neurologist was the realization that the brain functioned as a mosaic. The many divisions of the brain  each has its own function- they collaborate but work largely independently. When part of the brain is damaged by a stroke, after a period that’s like shock, the rest of the brain carries on as before, just missing an ability due to the loss of function. It’s a lot like loosing a limb. Loose the part of the brain that produces speech, moves the left arm or sees the right side of the world and those particular abilities are deleted.

Its hard to reconcile this view of brain as mosaic with our subjective sensation of a single “I”. There seems to be a single identity inside each of us that we identify as ourselves, as our consciousness, our mind. We wonder whether animals have a similar unitary experience of identity. And we wonder whether a machine could ever experience self.

Putting aside these interesting questions about animal and computer minds, there is a related question of where the mind resides. To my pragmatic way of thinking, asking where these sensations are experienced is like asking where in some one’s body the personhood resides. I am my body and no matter how many parts of my body might be lost or replaced, my personhood is my body. Simply. The truly remarkable subjective illusion of conscious unity makes it seems like the mind has to be something or somewhere other than just the function of the brain in its totality. But I say that this mind is a mosaic of functioning brain areas.

I haven’t read Damasio’s latest: Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, but I did see the review in the NYT by Ned Block. It interesting how Block wants to define consciousness much as I do, this odd subjective sensation of inhabiting a brain that interacts with an environment, criticizing Damasio for emphasizing “knowledge of one’s own existence and of the existence of surroundings.”

Damasio has been interested in how the subjective sensation of awareness arises in the brain. It seems unfair for Block to review a book by criticizing the author’s choice of subject rather than their approach to the subject. These questions of self awareness and more abstract thought are really more interesting than mapping experience in the brain. Damasio’s subject here seems to be the one that I’ve been writing about recently, which is how we view the metaphor and artifacts that we create in a uniquely human way. Language, metaphore and, above all I think, models capable of  running internal mental simulations are what let us imagine, plan and coordinate activity in ways never before seen on the planet.

I want to link this neurobiology of experience with the growing understanding of how language and metaphor are embodied in the brain and environment. I’m more and more convinced that the more real we see these abstractions as being real, the better we can deal with them in the world. My best example of this currently is equating fear, the emotion, with loss of control, loss of the feeling of mastery.

After all, making decisions under conditions of uncertainty can not be done well if motivated by fear of unknown, uncontrollable future events.

Context has changed

I never got the GTD focus on context.

While David Allen’s Getting Things Done was a big influence on my approach to simplifying life. I embraced the clean desk, the labeled files and next action approach quickly with great gains in effectiveness. But while I tried to adopt his approach to filing next actions by context, it never stuck. I never saw the value in it other than keeping an “errands” list.

Context should be a powerful organizing principle. After all, the options available to choose from should be strongly dependent on what’s in front of you. Moving from place to place should be equivalent to moving from task to task. Even in the virtual world, moving from Photoshop to Word should be a context shift.

We’ve pretty much erased context with technology. Communications channels are open and available 24/7. There are synchronous channels like phone calls that require the other party to be available and willing to talk. There are asynchronous channels like email and social networks that have variable latency but are always available. Except for physical errand involving material goods- grocery shopping, dry cleaning for example or other people- business meetings, haircuts, I can pretty much do any work I want to anywhere I am.

So there’s no context guiding action. In fact complexity in introduced by the sheer number of different ways I can do anything at any time. Want to jot down a note? There’s my pen and notebook. Or a post-it-note. Or Evernote. Evernote on the iPhone, iPad, Mac Book Pro, work Windows XP laptop. Or email to myself.

Its true that one solution would be to impoverish myself by eliminating choices. Do I need the Evernote on iPad option? Do I really need the iPad at all? Maybe I could just do everything on the iPhone.

I think choice is good. I’d rather have options, but find it helpful to take a moment and create what are basically rituals. Conscious, stereotyped behavior that’s consistent and relatively arbitrary just so that I don’t keep making the same decisions over and over again and then spending more time unravelling what I’ve done after the fact.

Ritual is human way to collapse complexity into simpler behavior paths and gain more control over the cognitive environment.

Lighting Effects



Stacked, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

This is a bit of an experiment with Photoshop’s Lighting Effects filter. Vincent Versace uses it extensively to light photographs after the fact. In this image, I was trying to be subtle about making what was relatively flat lighting with nice texture into something that was pretty convincingly sunlit.

Perhaps its a bit too subtle, but it certainly is a believable unreality to my eye.

Trust is Simplifying

The outrage directed toward the TSA reflects a breakdown in trust.

With terrorists trying to bring down planes, we don’t trust our fellow passengers. Every fresh attempt, even when not successful lowers that trust even further. The government and its TSA becomes the vehicle to demonstrate that lack of trust. As trust declines, surveillance increases. In a decade it’s gone from identity and magnetometer checks to direct body searches, either by technology or direct physical contact.

As discussed in the NYT today, there’s also a lack of trust between the government and the citizenry. We feel angry that government is being so intrusive and body searches seems to cross a personal limit for us. And the TSA doesn’t trust is to just go along and let them do their job.

The loss of trust in air travel creates hassle and uncertainty. Everything being carried onto a plane must be checked. Every person must be checked. No one is trusted in this system. Calls for more targeted surveillance are really calls for more trust of at least some individuals. After all, I know they can trust me. Its those suspicious looking young men I’m worried about. That would remove lots of hassle. Actually all of my hassle if they would trust me somehow.

Trust is a great simplifying principle. I trust my bank to keep my accounts private and secure. I trust other drivers on the road to stay in their lanes. As trust goes down, complexity goes way up. I have to worry about more and more because so much more could go wrong in so many unexpected ways.

I was introduced to the importance of trust in Francis Fukuyama’s book“Trust”
In it he looks across different cultures and describes the  structure of trust in each one and how it affects politics, economics and quality of life. Not surprisingly, the higher the level of trust, the better off people are. And one of his theses is that the U.S. with its frontier driven communitarianism, is one of the highest trust societies in the world.

Most simply, trust transform an uncertain potentially hazardous environment into a safe, reliable socially driven model. Its such a powerful simplifying principle that the desire to cooperate in a fair way is a deeply felt human quality, wired into our brains it seems.

Since I’m currently exploring ideas about extended cognition, lets turn the view 180 degrees. Usually we think of trusting in the external environment, looking for predictability. I think there’s an important aspect of self-trust that contributes to simplicity. If I can rely on myself to remember how to do something complex, I approach it with confidence.

That sense of mastery and self-confidence dispels fear just as trust in the world does.

On Packing Better

There is a difference between reducing complexity by deciding better and just artificially reducing choice through enforced “simplicity”. It is better, from a decision theory point of view, to have three shirts to choose from than to own only one shirt and lack choice.

With choice comes the chance for a better outcome. But don’t make the mistake of preserving choice instead of making choices.

I always think of packing as a great example of this. Better to decide well what to pack and travel light than to postpone choice and drag around too much for just in case scenarios. I see think is project planning. There are situations that call for robust plans with low failure probability and times for fast flexible plans that may need a trip back to the drawing board.

In the spirit of minimalism, I support the use of Folios

OTC Recommends: The Leather Document Folio | Off the Cuff: “”

True, folios have limited space and can never really compete with the functionality of a messenger bag or roomy elegance of a soft sided brief bag. You always have to hold it, or tuck it under your arm, and often there is no outside slash pocket for a paper or metro pass. But such limitations are to me a big part of their charm.

By necessity I am forced to shed most of the stuff I habitually carry around but never really use. It is simplification by requirement.

Part of the charm of the folio is enforcing the discipline to decide better. When appropriate.

What’s Worse Than a Blank Sheet of Paper?

That blank sheet of paper in front of me is pretty confrontational. It challenges me to decide what to do with it. The camera challenges me to pick it up and point it at something.

True, once I’m looking through the viewfinder, I go into some sort of  “Photographer” mode. My personal identity simplifies down to a guy looking through a little square. All of the circuitry that thinks about lens choice, aperture, light angle, shadow depth all spring into action unbidden.

I even hear Vincent Versace’s voice in my ear murmuring “Own the frame . . . own the frame”.

I capture, move, capture, adjust, scroll through images on the camera’s screen, adjust, capture, move.

There’s a flow where my vision, the set of tools and my environment all meld into a seamless extension of me.

Of course writing this post wasn’t all that different. I came to the text editor with the germ of an idea and soon found myself in a flood of ideas, unaware of the keyboard, word choice or what computer OS I was using. Me integrated into a set of tools interacting with an environment. Here the environment isn’t real at all. Just ASCII strings.

Engaging in all of the complexity of a blank sheet of paper or the unstructured visual environment puts the me that sits in my head “out there”. Words and cameras have that power.

The Internet has the opposite power. Sure I’m in a flow out there when browsing, but it’s a flow that’s not much use that emerges. It’s often a seamless flow, but its not controlled by a creative process, but by a consumptive process. Looking for a stimulus “out there” that will satisfy. A new email, maybe with good news. A post or tweet I agree with, that validates my point of view. News of a long awaited OS update- maybe just rumor of a new piece of gear. Not yet? Cycle out to something else and come back again later. Later? 5 minutes then 10 minutes.

Who’s the actor here? Who’s choosing?

Time for lunch. Where does the day go?

Warm and cool



The Golden Hour, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

I captured this last night to experiment with the warm and cool light idea. This is the view looking across the street from my house. The sun was down, but the D7000’s ability to capture crisply at ISO 800 plus the 35mm f/1.8 DX prime made this possible.

The Challenge of the Blank Sheet of Paper

A clean sheet of paper.

The open road. A new programming language

All examples of limitless possibilities. And where decisions can’t be made because alternatives are not refined.

Here even values don’t help because the is simultaneously everything to choose from but nothing to do.

Create a plan?  Doodle and wait for direction from within or without?

The first principle of Deciding Better is to decide to decide. We’re making decisions all the time, whether we are aware of the choices or not. In order to decide better, its critical to begin to be conscious about decisions. And we know that decisions can only be made in the present. A choice is an action and actions by definition are events in the “now”. You can’t do anything in the past or the future and, by extension it’s impossible to make decide to do something in the future. It’s impossible to change a decision made in the past as well of course.

The blank sheet of paper challenges this approach. How can decisions be made when there are no choices on offer? A blank sheet of paper provides no list of alternatives. Decision Theory suggests that the proper procedure is to brainstorm to create a list of all possible alternatives and then use some value weighting system to choose the best of the alternatives. Am I supposed to list all of the possible things to write? Fiction, non-fiction, lists, drawings . . .  Drawings of what? Fish, birds, building, people, microbes, maps . . .

Way too many possibilities to enumerate. More buckets that I have at my disposal.

It’s well known that too many choices can be as much of a problem as too few choices. In fact we feel most comfortable when there is no choice at all. But at least give me clear alternatives. This in part I believe is behind the flight to simplicity we see these days. As a response to excess we reject complexity all together. Just simplify my life. Make it easy for me. Clear alternatives that represent real values.

Faced with the blank sheet of paper, I believe that the right place to look is in the opposite direction. Not at the paper but into the viewer of the paper.  Look within. The blank paper, the tool on the bench or the computer language has nothing to offer except the possibility of action. It is the actor, not the tool that needs simplification.

There has to be some model that is inside us that provides the list of possible actions to take with that blank sheet of paper. This is a reduction of complexity within ourselves which in principle is no different from reducing complexity in any other domain of making decisions, creating simplified models.

Balancing Warm and Cool



Silo, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

Looking at classic color landscape (Galen Rowell, others) there is often a beautiful interplay of warm and cool. Often its the warmth of low angle sun on rock playing against the dark sky. I tend to make the mistake of waiting for warmth in the sky instead of using its coolness as a foil.