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From: mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.psychology,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: Fluid vs. Crystallized Intelligence
Message-ID: <36244@cup.portal.com>
Date: 27 Nov 90 01:25:10 GMT
References: <35870@cup.portal.com>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 99

Language is first and foremost the reproduction 
mechanism for memes.  A meme (as defined by Dawkins in 
_The_Selfish_Gene_) is an individual particle of 
culture, just as a gene is an individual particle of 
genetic inheritance.  A meme can be an individual 
thought, such as "soup is good food" or a complex of 
thoughts, such as a religion.

Language is how memes jump from person to person.  On 
the transmit end, the language organ photographs a 
portion of the network of crystallized intelligence and 
encodes it for shipment.  On the receive end, it decodes 
the package and temporarily installs it into the 
corresponding place in the receiver's network.  The code 
is free of the context of the transmitter and receiver.  
For example, if I say "This tastes like fish." that 
would seem like a good thing to a receiver who likes 
fish, or a bad thing to one who doesn't.  I.e. the 
message doesn't carry the context with it unless it is 
specifically encoded, as in "This tastes like -- yuck -- 
fish.".  (Voice inflection can transmit the same 
information, but that is just another form of specific 
encoding of the context.)

I can tell you anything in my conscious mind, from why I 
don't eat pickles to why I don't go to church.  
Likewise, I can input almost any idea from you.  I might 
not agree with the truth or falseness of what you say, 
but I can try it on for size.  I can map it into my 
network and see if it fits.

Somehow, the language organ is like some sort of robot 
arm, with random-access pick-and-place reach into 
arbitrary places in the network, as illustrated below.

    * - *   * - * - * - *   * - * - *   * - * - *
    |   |       |       |   |       |       |   |
    * - * - * - *   *   * - * - * - * - *   * - *
        |       |   |       |           |   |    
        * - * - * - *       * - * - * - * - *    
                |           |       |            
                *       * - *       *            
                                                 
                         (*)                     
     --------------   /\  V                      
     |  Language  |  /  \ |                      
     |  Encoder/  |_/    \|                      
     |  Decoder   |                              
     --------------                              

How could an organ have such all-invasive access?  It 
could selectively activate individual particles of 
crystallized intelligence using an address bus.  For 
example, when the address bus for the food department of 
my brain carries the code for "pickles", an address 
decoder activates my pickle-agents including one 
connected to my "too much salt" agent.  Seventy binary 
signals can address more than a billion billion 
particles, so obviously such an address bus needn't be 
unreasonably large.  (It would probably be much larger 
than seventy binary signals, however, in order that a 
random address picked out by an agent would be likely to 
be globally unique, much like the system used to assign 
credit card numbers.)

My guess is that the language organ has two parts:  a 
centralized encode/decode part (Broca's and Wernicke's 
areas, etc.) hooked up to the hearing and vocal organs, 
and a distributed part -- the "robot arm" -- consisting 
of one or more sparsely encoded buses capable of 
interrogating all of the conscious agents and agencies 
and even placing new agents and constructing new 
agencies, although the newly-arrived memes seem to have 
weak connections, and require reinforcement from the 
existing network to become permanent.  (I.e. you are 
much more likely to believe your own conclusions than 
those spoken to you or read in a book, until you've had 
time to consider them.)

In an earlier posting, I claimed that thoughts are the 
experience of agents crossing the fluid vs. crystallized 
interface.  Now, I'd go further and claim that dreams 
are the experience of agents and agencies spontaneously 
forming and re-dissolving while the robot arm is idle.  
We don't perceive dreams while we're awake because 
agents and agencies constructed by the arm are formed at 
a higher voltage or pressure or something.  While the 
arm is active, we don't see the spontaneous activity, 
just as we don't see the stars when the sun is out.  The 
higher intensity of the connections created by the arm 
is lacking in the agents and agencies formed during 
dreams, which is why dreams are forgotten so quickly.

New thoughts begin in this haze of spontaneous activity 
(which is always present, even though we only perceive 
it at night).  A new thought occurs when two 
crystallized agents need a connection, and a fluid agent 
jumps into the gap.  If the connection is really needed, 
it gets reinforced and becomes permanent.