I saw a meme today that suggested that since only Republicans in DC are getting Coronavirus, perhaps it is a plot by Democrats to spread Covid among the Republicans.

Of course the more likely explanation is that since the Republicans at these events weren’t wearing masks and didn’t practice social distancing, there was a lot of virus in the air. And that’s why they got sick at Republican gatherings where there were no Democrats in attendance.

Though it is kind of funny for that meme to say, “No Dems got it, therefore they must be behind it,” there’s a danger that some people will actually believe it, and that’s how a conspiracy theory starts.

The people who believe such things don’t accept the simple explanation because they don’t like that explanation. It disagrees with their views, which might make them look foolish because they publicly touted the views that are now in question.

So, they look for another explanation that is more to their liking. And when they find one, no matter how off the beaten track it is, they’ll believe it because it doesn’t contradict their existing beliefs, and they won’t look foolish in their own eyes (or the eyes of others).

It is called Confirmation Bias – rejecting information that doesn’t fit a person’s pre-existing view.

But if you reject the obvious explanation, there’s a big hole – a gap – something that requires an explanation, and these kind of folks have rejected the simple and obvious one.

People want the world to make sense. And they want to be right. Even more, they don’t want to be wrong.

So if you put that all together with Confirmation Bias rejection of the simple truth, folks will go to all kinds of lengths to spin tall tales, no matter how absurd and convoluted to fill that gap with an explanation -just like this meme.

Unfortunately, anyone who sees the meme who has rejected the obvious truth because it flies in the face of what they believe (and want to believe), and if they haven’t come up with their own satisfactory explanation yet, they might well latch onto the meme because it fills that hole and, from their perspective, the world makes sense once again, and they were right all along.

Confirmation Bias complete.

We train our minds every day to either let the facts drive our beliefs, or let our beliefs filter the facts.

Our minds are only truly free when we let them follow all the information and choose that which makes the most sense, regardless of whether or not it matches our pre-existing believes.

Practical Narrative Psychology

Melanie Anne Phillips

In the classes I teach on story structure we often point to Clarice Starling (Jody Foster) in “Silence of the Lambs” as a great example of a Success/Bad story in which the goal (save the senator’s daughter from Buffalo Bill) is achieved, but the personal angst of not being able to save that spring lamb remains, as evidenced by Lecter’s final conversation with Starling over the phone in which he asks, “Are the lambs still screaming?”

Her silence in response (plus the somber soundtrack music even though this he graduation from the academy) both indicate she is still holding on to that angst.

We usually leave it there, having served our purpose of illustrating what Success/Bad means. Sometimes we go on to say that the reason she is trying to save all these people today – the reason she got into law enforcement (besides the fact her father was a sheriff) was because she can’t let go of that one lamb she couldn’t save and keeps trying to make up for it.

But now I’m thinking that while that may be true in an objective sense, nobody would carry that weight in their heart and act out that way for those reasons alone. You’d see it, you’d understand it and move on.

Rather, I think the reason she does what she does is not to make up for that lamb but to avoid having to carry another similar sense of loss.

So every extraordinary effort – even to the extent of putting herself at risk of death – is to keep from adding one more victim to the pain or failure she already carries.

It would seem, then, counter-intuitive to put oneself in a profession where the risk of failure in the exact same subject matter area as your angst.

But consider – most of us need to pay penance when we feel we have screwed up. The risk of hurting herself emotionally even more by her choice of profession, therefore, is penance for the first lamb she lost, while the extra-human effort she puts into each case is the attempt to avoid adding another instance to the pain she already carries.

Pretty screwed up, really, but in actuality the only way a mind, a heart, can make up for failing another in a way that can’t be fixed is to try to help others in a similar way. But then the risk of failure is omnipresent, so we give up a life of our own to excel enough to avoid another failure.

It is a never ending cycle of emotional self-flagellation: trying to make up for the failure by putting oneself in the situation most likely to create a repeat, then devoting one’s life to trying to avoid the failure and thereby punishing oneself for the original failure.

That’s how we think and how we feel. Of course, the only way out of this vicious circle is to accept the original failure, call it a clean slate, and move on. But who can easily do that, and how?

I’ve been reading about the advent of the new programming language, GPT-3.  Very interesting.  But, of course, it continues down the wrong path to create an artificial true self-awareness, and merely approximates human thinking through increasing levels of finer and finer detail.

The point is, the as long as  you see everything in a system as binary, there will be no self-awareness, no matter how fine the details are.  It is only when the details blend together so that they move as a wave, rather than interact as particles, that you get the second have of the Artificial Mind which requires both binary and analog – particle and wave.

This essential relationship is at the heart of the quad – one side blend and the other is discrete.

This same relationship is seen at the core of all constructs that have achieved the perfect balance:

Mass, Energy, Space, Time

Knowledge, Thought, Ability, Desire

Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb

Strong forces, Weak forces, Electromagnetism, Gravity

Earth, Water, Wind, Fire

Each of these quads exhibits the exact same interrelationships among the four components, and each set of four will have three that seem like the others, and one that seem the odd man out.

But more important, each set of four divides into two pairs – one part at a given fractal level and a second pair at another fractal level.  Or, more accurately, one pair that creates fractals and a second pair that creates frictals.

More basically, as described at the beginning, one seeing discrete particles and one seeing homogeneous influences.  Translate as digital vs. analog.

In fact, the basic functioning circuit of self-awareness would require no more than to be comprised of one transistor and one tube.  The transistor represents the neural network and the tube represents the biochemistry.

These two aspects of the brain generate, in tandem, the mind.

The neural network sets pathways – obstacles and riverbeds – through which the information energy of the biochemistry  is channeled.  The energy of the biochemistry erodes obstacles and builds up the material of thought to divert channels, block them completely, or carve new ones in the fabric of experience.

Each system informs the other, alters the other, and each operates at a level a magnitude away from the other so that when one sees one system as made of  particles, one sees the other as functioning as a wave.

Could we look deeply enough into the wave media (the biochemistry of the brain) to see the particles (individual ions and neurotransmitters).  Surely.  But from that level of perspective the neuro network will appear as chaos.  Similarly, if we step back far enough so that the digital nature of the synapses blends together to create a wave form, the function of the biochemistry will no longer be visible and will appear to be chaos as well.  Chaos from above, or chaos from below.

But even if we move  up or down in perspective, in the end, we will find there two inter-affecting systems: one digital and one analog.  And one will channel the other, and the other will influence the one.

So, building a self-aware system will never be achieved simply with increasing detail.

However, just as the minimal circuit of self awareness  that I described earlier – a transistor and a tube, can easily be ratchetted up to a supercomputer and a quantum computer, not running in parallel, but sharing the same processing space so that every calculation of the supercomputer is influenced by the tendencies of the quantum computer, and every tendency of the quantum computer is channeled by the supercomputer.

Such a system would not only rival our own intensity of self-awareness, but might very well exceed it, which is, actually, rather disturbing.

But, for a practical example of such a system that already exists, consider the binary connections and neural network patterns of social media as the digital, and consider the direct human interactions of people in the real world as the analog.

An even happens, people report it on social media.  Social media digests it and points of view are formed regarding it.  These points of view channel human energy by organizing protests and gatherings, which grow their own energy, which is then covered in social media, and so on.

Social media channels, and the people in the streets influence.  And so, with billions of people, might not one wonder if we have not now already created a self-awareness a magnitude above our own – one that cannot see us any more than our minds can directly perceive our brains, and one that we cannot see any more than our brains can perceive our minds?

Something to think about.