ON INTELLEGENCE by Jeff Hawkins with Sandra Blakeslee CHAPTER 7 CONSCIOUSNESS AND CREATIVITY

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ON INTELLEGENCE by Jeff Hawkins with Sandra
BlakesleeCHAPTER 7CONSCIOUSNESS AND CREATIVITY

• Reviewed by Chuck Selden

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Chapter 7 is written to answer common questions
Hawkins hears after his presentations

• What is Intelligence?
• What is Creativity?
• What is Consciousness?
• What is Imagination?
• What is Reality?
• (Can you imagine covering this in 27 pages?)

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Hawkins posits that we all use experience to
predict the next event

• Thus, the next repeat of a familiar event is
  anticipated to follow a stereotype
• Any novel event stimulates a new reaction pathway
• You know this central concept Stereotype
• invariant representation
• invariant memory

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Evolution of Intelligence

• Equated with evolution, period!
• Unicellular organism--chemotaxis
• memory generated/exists in the DNA
• behaviors are automatic
• Plants phototaxis, toxin generation
• Chemical signals, circulatory system
• Lower Animals learning, nervous system
• Behaviors still automatic, somewhat plastic

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Mammals evolve

• First appearance of the neocortex
• Hierarchical structure
• Invariant representations
• Predictions based on analogy
• Intelligent to different degrees

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Humans evolve

• Bigger neocortex
• More complex analogies
• Language (with its hierarchical structure)
• Share analogies and predictions (patterns,
  stereotypes) with other humans
• children, tribespeople
• Species spreads across the Earth

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Humans add technology

• Communication
• Writing
• Electronic
• Population explodes spiraling success

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Now, to the questions
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What is Creativity?

• Inherent property of every cortical region
• Everyday acts of perception are actually creative
  acts
• Our senses give few details per moment
• Our creativity fills in the blanks
• Invariant memories - predictions
• This is unnoticeably common
• Creative brilliance is rare

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Obvious Creativity

• Higher levels of abstraction
• To make uncommon predictions
• Using uncommon analogies
• Poetry Theres daggers in mens smiles
• (Shakespeare)
• Make new ways to see or affect the world
• Break expected patterns, teach new ones

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Whence comeMore Creative People?

• Nurture
• Experiencesexperts
• Memories pushed to lower cortical levels
• Better at recognizing patterns
• More complex predictions
• Nature
• Some brains are different
• More mass, more connections
• Albert Einstein

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How to be More Creative

• Assume there is an answer
• Let your mind wander
• Re-arrange the problem
• Dont give up
• (repeat the sequence)
• Hawkins invention of Graffiti
• We like learning new skills

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Creativity can lead you astray

• Johannes Kepler
• Circular planetary orbits-Platonic solids
• Tycho Brahes exact measurements
• Brain is happy to create and accept
• false patterns
• Pseudoscience, bigotry, faith, intolerance
• All rooted in false analogy

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What is Consciousness?

• Simply what it feels like to have a cortex
• not a big problem
• Not a magical sauce poured onto our
  neurological (cellular) brains
• Zombies dont have consciousness
• Do zombies have defects / deficiencies in their
  sub-cortical processing?
• Consciousness has two components
• Self-awareness
• Qualia

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Hawkins Notions of Consciousness

• Self-awarenesssynonymous with forming
  declarative memories
• Memories you can recall and talk about
• BUT if you forget an experience, does that mean
  you were unconscious?
• Qualiathe idea that feelings are independent of
  sensory input
• Feelingness or emotional loading
• Comes from sub-cortical areas

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Qualities of Sensations

• Qualia ? different senses seem qualitatively
  different
• Yet are cortically processed in the same way
• Difference is in sub-cortical processing
• Synesthesiaex a sound is viewed

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What is Imagination?

• SIMPLE
• Cortically generated patterns or predictions
• Are sent back down the cortical hierarchy
• Becoming inputs, and
• This process is then re-cycled and cascaded
• To make an enlarging construct of increasing
  complexity.

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What is Reality?

• REALITY is your personal model of the world
• Created by exposure to the real world through
  our senses
• When we plan and think about the world, we do it
  in our model
• Does our model, then, create the world? NO,
  but we can then know the consequences of our
  actions before we do them.

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The Soul

• The brain is unconscious of itself
• Our thoughts seem independent of our brains or
  bodies
• Separated from the world
• Is this why we think we have a soul?
• The MIND is dependant on the BRAIN
• Without saying so, Hawkins infers
• There is no soul

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What determines your model of REALITY?

• Your experiences
• Your culture
• Your interpretations
• YIELDS your Stereotypes
• Your beliefs
• Your moral reasoning
• Your biases

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Hawkins last words on Reality

• As STEREOTYPES are an inherent feature of the
  brain we will do well to
• Recognize false stereotypes
• Be skeptical
• Think critically
• Ferret out fact from fiction
• Use scientific method
• Instill the best values we know

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THE MIND IS WHAT THE BRAIN DOESNeurons are just
cells