At the moment of writing this, I am sitting at an airport looking out onto the runway, at planes landing and flying, at the harmony of airline crew members making sure that the aircraft are tended to and supporting a timely departure (I sound like an in-flight announcement don't I). I cannot help but marvel at how far human ingenuity has brought us. Not very long ago (a blink in time), we were hunter-gatherers living in forests and running around trying to gather food and keep ourselves safe. Long before that (a few billion years ago), we were single-cell organisms living in an ethereal soup that the early earth was. In those days of single-cell organisms, the first multicellular organism emerged from the symbiotic relationship between a cell that consumed other cells as nourishment and a smaller, simpler cell that converted free oxygen into energy. In an act of defiance to their design, the larger cell, instead of consuming the other cell (like the norm), absorbed it. So now, the smaller one could continue to produce energy by fixing oxygen, while the larger one formed a protective membrane around it. This was the birth of the multicellular organism, and that cell that fixes oxygen is found even today in every cell you possess. It is called mitochondria, and it is infinitely more complicated than that first multicellular organism. Still, it does the same thing; it generates the energy that powers all the other cells in the body.
Our brain develops using similar pathways, and the cells that constitute it have a very specialized function - to "think" and to "do." The brain evolved to become the control center that coordinates "living" and "being." Other animals have brains too, but I have often wondered what makes us human beings so different. Let me try to think through that in this essay.
While other animals have brains, what makes us different is the presence of a pre-frontal cortex (PFC). In many ways, the PFC is a reverse evolution engine and equips us, humans, with the embedded learnings gleaned from billions of years of evolution. Think about it, evolution is a relentless struggle against chaos, the most definite way of making order in absolute disorder and reinforcing patterns that survive time. Realizing that my brain is akin to a machine learning model, trained on billions of years of the universe, and the control function being survival, was pretty profound. Apart from pattern recognition, we are also capable of storing patterns in our memory (in a way that is the only thing we store). Thinking of the brain as a pattern recognition engine and our memory as pattern storage opens us to some interesting ideas.
When we are born as babies, the underlying architecture of the brain and the "evolution engine" is present within all of us. However, we are not born knowing things; we learn them (very, very quickly, I might add). So in a sense, the first few years of your life are the priming period of your brain. Your environment and your upbringing lead to your sense of self. Our sense of self, is a stored pattern. Our caregivers and our environment shape our perception of ourselves. As we grow, we add and subtract from that pattern. It is what ties your memories together, and how you are the "hero" (pattern) in your story. Your sense of self is a core pattern, and not changed easily or without effort. If it changed too easily, then your brain cannot tie memories together. This is why people's sense of self only changes after a struggle. If it was too easy, then it isn't a core pattern. In this model, "ego" is a necessary side-effect, a sense of self where the pattern is based on extrinsic factors. As your brain is priming itself, it needs external indicators to formulate its own control function. The desire for money, fame, power, and sex is your ego exerting itself, a pattern that your brain latched on to at an early age and integrated it into the pattern of your "self." As you grow, you have to work on your ego - just because your brain latched on to societally desirable patterns does not make them right. Every human being should contest with their ego and shed those patterns that your older, wiser self knows is weighing you down.
Music is a pattern in sound, and hence so stimulating to our brain. We may not be able to create it, but a beautiful pattern does not go unnoticed. This inherent pattern in music is also why there is musical theory and why when an untrained pianist plays, it sounds noisy, but when a trained one does, it is beautiful. The trained pianist knows to generate a pattern through music, not noise.
A story is a pattern communicated through words, telling the start, the middle, and an end. The brain's episodic memory is concerned with connecting the cacophony of your sensory inputs into a cohesive story. We love a hero's story because our brain constructs this story for ourselves. We are the hero of our own story, where our sense of self is the main character, and almost everybody else, a supporting cast member. A good movie is an episode constructed by a director, where your brain doesn't need to do the heavy lifting of tying sensory inputs together. Being a good storyteller is hence a gift; you are able to turn words into patterns, and since our brain loves patterns - the coherence of the story can move us, spur us to action, bring down power structures and mobilize masses of people (Mahatma Gandhi, MLK, Hitler).
Knowledge is a pattern of patterns, which is why knowledge acquired through memorization doesn't stick around for too long. Real knowledge and learning come from attaching a learned pattern to an existing pattern in your brain. Unconnected patterns are lost to time. This is also the underlying theory of chunking, where information is stored in your short term memory for processing and vanishes pretty soon; unless you see a pattern in the information and you associate it to that pattern. When you do associate, the information goes into your long term store where it persists. The more patterns you have in your arsenal, the more incoming information you are successful in transitioning to your long term store.
Science is finding new patterns, and the scientific method is a time-tested system to ensure the veracity of new patterns. This is why I find science so beautiful; you are finding new patterns in the universe, thus reducing the information entropy. An engineer is concerned with taking these patterns and turning them into useful contraptions. For example, Bernoulli figured out a pattern in the way fluids behave, where depending on the fluid's velocity, it exerts different pressure on the material it is flowing through. Modern airplanes are engineered around that pattern, where the shape of the wing forces air (which is a fluid) to have different velocities above and below the wing. The different velocities generate a difference in pressures, which generates a lift (that is why the wing is shaped in a bulbous way).
Creativity is finding an imaginative way to connect unrelated patterns or see patterns where others don't. Einstein elegantly connecting the pattern of space and the pattern of time through relativity was a feat of scientific and creative daring.
Curiosity is a deep appreciation for patterns and a propensity to look for patterns everywhere.
Awe, is when you receive a pattern so profoundly beautiful that you are transfixed.
Love is a resonance of patterns.
What a privilege it is to be alive. To be endowed with a neural engine that is a condensation of billions of years of evolution, and we get total and complete control on what to apply it on. Evolution is a beautiful recursion, it is through evolution that the universe is attempting to understand itself. We are gods, and our kryptonite is time.
Shine on, you crazy patterns.
Associations:
- Society of Minds by Marvin Minsky - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0671657135/
- Molecular Biology of a Cell - https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Cell-Bruce-Alberts/dp/0815345240
- Bernouli Theorem Explanation - http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/pber.html