The MetaPattern and Freely Evolving Intelligence
Thought and Memory through Time
Patterns and Medium
Patterns are Structure, Emptiness is Chaos
Shifting an observed pattern into a medium where its less usually found allows us a different perspective of that space.
Abstraction then allows us to string together multiple patterns, to find a relationship between them. A pattern of patterns, hence MetaPattern.
This allows us to form a cohesive model of our environment in our minds, a simulation of the universe around us strung together from all the various stimuli from our many senses. Without employing abstraction, we would not be able to process that much information coming to our brain centers.
Some people began wondering if the universe they saw was real, or merely a simulation. The conclusion could have been arrived at much sooner had they considered that the universe they saw through their eyes was indeed simulated by their brains. Our eyes are only capable of perceiving in two dimensions each. The third dimension in our awareness is a product of that simulation.
Because the act of observation collapses quantum states, it becomes impossible to actually make sense of a "real" universe because there would not be one. It would be a fuzz of uncollapsed quantum states, until seen through the eyes of observation and abstraction. It seems abstraction is a natural optimisation for multi-cellular species. Allowing a cluster of neurons to work together to compute, delegation and categorization of thoughts and memory (experience) into a problem solving machine.
With larger neural networks, this abstraction became all the more important, allowing much higher levels of pattern recognition than those of lower neural density. With more efficient pattern recognition, we could process more of our environment at once, creating richer and more detailed simulations of the "real" universe around us, without the noisy information of dimensions irrelevant to the human mind.
How does abstraction work? The process of abstraction seems to be tapping into randomness, possibly utilizing the underlying universe, to trigger shifts in perspectives. Once patterns are spotted in the canvas of memory, they're flagged for attention. After a perspective is scanned for a first layer of patterns, the flagged patterns become a new layer, and the second layer of perspective is scanned for patterns.
This neural density allowed us more memory than usual for creatures. That combined with our long lifespans and prepubescent periods, allowed our mental instinct to evolve under the influence of resonant patterns in our environment, allowing a conscious mind to cast a wider net for relationships between points of data in our senses. That instinct for patterns varies in scope and orientation for each person, due to both genetic origin and circumstantial variation across lives during which thought patterns are collected from the environment and integrated into instinct.
Art is a Skill of Abstraction and Metaphors
Art is the practice of encoding a complex web of patterns into a medium, textured by entropy (randomness), in and effort to influence an environment. Good art resonates across simulated universes within minds, introducting new detail and a better view of the meta-universe.
Language itself is an art, encoding ideas into sound waves to be delivered and then reborn into the universes simulated near us in other people's heads.
Will is to engage the meta-universe and directing our motion through it with intent. Will is generated by desire. Desire is born into life from a genetic code inhabiting a flesh medium, but evolved by experience. Is will free? If you consider that an entity's will is owned wholly by itself, though influenced by its environment, then yes. But it doesn't seem enough. Perhaps if you consider that the environment consists of a field of seeming randomness that permeates all of reality, you could consider that free. But does freedom actually apply as a pattern in this medium? Because part of will's mechanisms of navigating the meta-universe is through directed attention and conscious thought, will and consciousness are really the product of a structured universe interacting with a field of randomness. A mind is like a little kink in the meta-universe.
Matter and Space
Movement and Time
Randomness and Harmony
