Society of Mind

In general, we're least aware of what our minds do best.

The Principle Of Non compromise The longer an interval conflict persists among on agent's subordinates the weaker becomes that agent's status among other competitors. If such internal problems aren't settled soon, other agents will take control and the agents formerly involved will be "dismissed".

In order to be opposed, two things must serve related goals, or otherwise engage the selfsome agencies.

Which are our slowest-changing agencies of all? Later we'll see that these must include the concerned not merely with the things we want, but with what we want ourselves to be that is the ideals we set for ourselves.

There are countless different types of networks that contain loops. But all networks that contain no loops are basically the same each has the form of a simple chain.

Minds can lead more productive lives when working on problems that can be solved.

We never really know ourselves because there are so many other processes and policies that never show themselves directly in our behaviour but work behind the scenes.

When a pin drops, you might say, "I just heard a pin drop.". But no one says, "I hear a pin dropping.". Our speaking agencies know from experience that the physical episode of pin dropping will be over before you can even start to speak. But you would say "I am in love," rather than "I was just in love," because your speaking agencies know that the agencies involved with personal attachments work at a slower pace, with states that may persist for months or years. The slower an agency operates that is, the longer the invervals between each change of state, the more external signals can arrive inside those intervals.

The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected to it to all the other things we know. That's why it's almost always wrong to seek the "real meaning" of anything. A thing with just one meaning has scarcely any meaning at all.

But then what would we substitute for them- once we divested ourselves of all those ties to instinct and society? We'd each end up as instruments of even more capricious sorts of self-invented goals.

The surer you are that you like what you are doing, the more completely your other ambitions are being suppressed.

But the relation between wanting and liking is not simple at all, because our preferences are the end products of so many negotiations among other agencies. To accomplish any substantial goal, we must renounce the other possibilities and engage machinery to keep ourselves from succumbing to nostalgia or remorse. Then we use words like "liking" to express the operation of the mechanism that holds us to our choice. Liking's job is shutting down alternatives, we ought to understand it role since, it narrows down our universe. This definition does not reflect what liking is but only shows what liking does.

The only way to solve hard problems is by breaking them into smaller ones and then, when those are too difficult, dividing them in turn.

Probably, there is no way to avoid at least a certain degree of discomfort when we make substantial changes in how we think.

For in the early stages of acquiring any really new skill, a person must adopt at least a partly antipleasure attitude. It’s the same for doing mathematics, climbing freezing mountain peaks, or playing pipe organs with one’s feet: some parts of the mind find it horrible, while other parts enjoy farcing those first parts to work for them. We seem to have no names for processes like these, though they must be among our most important ways to grow.

Papert’s Principle: Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth based no simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows.

“Learning” is making useful changes in the workings of our minds.

People just dont learn so well unless they are interested or concerned.

Until we learn to make old descriptions fit new circumstances our old knowledge can be applied only to the circumstances in which it was learned. And that would scarcely ever work, since circumstances never repeat themselves perfectly.

Many good ideas are really two ideas in one-which form a bridge between two reals of thought or different points of view.

The Exception Principle: It rarely pays to tamper with a rule that nearly always works. It’s better just to complement it with an accumulation of specific exceptions.

It’s not so bad, to start with “Birds can fly” and later change it into “Birds can fly, unless they are penguins and ostriches.”. But if you continue to seek perfection, your rules will turn into monstrosities.

There can’t be any “causes” in a world in which everything happens depends more or less equally upon everything else that happens.

In general, a single definition rarely works: Purposeful definitions are usually too loose. They include many things we do not intend. Structured definitions are usually too tight. They reject many things we want to include.

Our best ideas are often those that bridge between two different worlds.

Clear definition help us bridge between the “ends” we seek and the “means” we have.

Too much commitment leads to doing only one single thing; too little concern produces aimless wandering.

The Recursion Principle When a problem splits into smaller parts, then unless one can apply the mind’s full power to each subjob, one’s intellect will get dispersed and leave less cleverness for each new task.

All human communities seem to work out policies for how their members ought to think in forms that are thought of as common sense or as law, religion, or philosophy.

We like the kinds of properties that do not change capriciously. The most useful sets of properties are those whose members do not interact too much.

Nonetheless, to think effectively, we often have to turn aside from certainty to take some chance of being wrong. Our memory systems are powerful because they are not constrained to be perfect.

Our attitudes towards things we love or loathe are often much less changeable than those things themselves- particularly in the case of other people’s personalities.

A brain has no single, common memory system. İnstead, each part of the brain has several types of memory-agencies that work in somewhat different way, to suit particular purposes.

In science, one can learn the most by studying what seems the least.

The amnesia of infancy, makes us assume that all our wonderful abilities were always there inside our inds, and we never stop to ask ourselves how they began and grew.

Our minds contain processes that enable us to solve problems we consider difficult. “Intelligence” is our name for whichever of those processes we don’t yet understand.

The Progress Principle: Any process of exhaustive search can be greatly reduced if we possess some way to detect when “progress” has been made. Then we can trace a path toward a solution.

The idea of a difference-engine embodies both elements: a representation of some outcome and a mechanism to make it persist until that outcome is achieved.

Perhaps what we call genius is rare because our evolution works without respect for individuals. Could any tribe or culture endure in which each “individual discovered novel ways to think? If not, how sad, since the genes for genius might then lead not to nurturing, but only to frequent weeding out. Whenever you “get a good idea,” solve a problem,or have a memorable experience, you activate a K-line to “represent” it. A K-line is a wirelike structure that attaches itself to whichever mental agents are active when you solve a problem or have a good idea. When you activate that K-line later, the agents attached to it are aroused, putting you into a “mental state” much like the one you were in when you solved that problem or got that idea.” This should make it relatively easy for you to solve new,similar problems.

A “total state” of mind is a list that specifies which agents are active and which are quiet at a certain movement. A “partial state” of mind merely specifies that certain agents are active but does not say which other agents are quiet.

Past a certain level of detail, the more one sees, the less one can tell one is seeing.