cartography

The Buddha mapped out the mind in the language of his day but we can do better with the tools we have now.

I think that a good starting point would be to take the neuronal system as the land and the endocrine system as the weather. They both influence each other, but disproportionately. Autism is solid, adhd is fluid. And remember we all have these.

In this analogy I had some Jupiter-like weather going on and now it’s just a bit blustery.

You could map brain states out according to the individual using this dual system. 32 dopamine points for me is different to 32 for you, and that’s because our land is different.

The weather shapes the land over time. But mostly the land shapes the weather, if your brain is functioning normally.

So you could have a topographical map which symbolises the physical structures of the brain, volitional action, memory, thought, etc. Then a meteorological system for predicting when a storm is incoming, etc.

I also think that ‘slightly fucked up’ endocrine systems are essential for the species. Otherwise we’d all be Zuckerbot bananas ripe for a blight. Occasional errors in the genome and a bit of RNG in the emotions will keep things moving forward. 

Maybe the rng in the emotions is like a social version of the genome evolving. Maybe this is where the memenome (is that a word?) comes from. Collective behaviours spurred on by a random spurt of dopamine which causes a divergent choice that turns out for the better. Survival of the fittest, for ideas.

With a solution like this it becomes plausible to upload some form of consciousness into the cloud, I think. At the very least a structure like this would enable a machine to read and record a state.

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