To check understanding by way of grossly oversimplified illustration: The appropriate mind meat might identify a “person” in some sensory scene by pattern-matching against stored archetypes. The presence of the person could be indicated on the map as a single character (such as a stick figure) that points to the archetype, rather than the long-form description of the chunk of sense data that makes up the person in my perception. “People”, then, can be the stick figure character and a scalar indicating how often in the scene the “person” archetype can be matched.
During decompression (memory recall), the appropriate module can use the scalars attached to the pointers to fill in the parameters for the repeat command while building person objects from the archetype.
That took a turn for the computer-sciencey, but that’s my background. For what it’s worth, your conception of “what is Number” extends neatly and intuitively on what I was already using by explaining why the brain might benefit from tagging patterns with a scalar. Thanks for the detail!
Yeah, sounds like you understand it. I suppose I should add that if you’re using the repeat command you won’t be able to rebuilt the scene because you won’t know where the objects are. But maybe all you need to know about a scene is that there are 10 horses and 5 sheep and 1 farmer and the actual positions are irrelevant.
Update: Actually on reflection, I suppose we could add a new notation that said repeat n times at these co-ordinates. Then we’d be able to actually reconstruct the scene.
Agreed. The quantity scalar is certainly not the only metadata that could be stored. If I was actually writing a program, the objects_in_scene array would probably be allowed to contain as many details as the system decided was relevant. Then the scalar would be the size of the array of objects, with each object having a pointer to an archetype and properties defined for any of those details. In fact, the size need not actually be stored, but can be reconstructed easily by examination of the array itself using something like objects_in_scene.count().
For other objects, it might make sense to count more explicitly. An object referring to a group archetype, for example, might be given a size property if the system cared to do so. From what I’ve read, it seems likely that (in human brains) this property will mostly store an exponent rather than trying to determine an exact number.
I expect this can get extremely complicated in a human brain! Evolution isn’t much for intra-system optimization just for efficiency’s sake, after all.
To check understanding by way of grossly oversimplified illustration: The appropriate mind meat might identify a “person” in some sensory scene by pattern-matching against stored archetypes. The presence of the person could be indicated on the map as a single character (such as a stick figure) that points to the archetype, rather than the long-form description of the chunk of sense data that makes up the person in my perception. “People”, then, can be the stick figure character and a scalar indicating how often in the scene the “person” archetype can be matched. During decompression (memory recall), the appropriate module can use the scalars attached to the pointers to fill in the parameters for the
repeatcommand while buildingpersonobjects from the archetype.That took a turn for the computer-sciencey, but that’s my background. For what it’s worth, your conception of “what is Number” extends neatly and intuitively on what I was already using by explaining why the brain might benefit from tagging patterns with a scalar. Thanks for the detail!
Yeah, sounds like you understand it. I suppose I should add that if you’re using the repeat command you won’t be able to rebuilt the scene because you won’t know where the objects are. But maybe all you need to know about a scene is that there are 10 horses and 5 sheep and 1 farmer and the actual positions are irrelevant.
Update: Actually on reflection, I suppose we could add a new notation that said repeat n times at these co-ordinates. Then we’d be able to actually reconstruct the scene.
Agreed. The quantity scalar is certainly not the only metadata that could be stored. If I was actually writing a program, the
objects_in_scenearray would probably be allowed to contain as many details as the system decided was relevant. Then the scalar would be the size of the array of objects, with each object having a pointer to an archetype and properties defined for any of those details. In fact, the size need not actually be stored, but can be reconstructed easily by examination of the array itself using something likeobjects_in_scene.count(). For other objects, it might make sense to count more explicitly. An object referring to agrouparchetype, for example, might be given asizeproperty if the system cared to do so. From what I’ve read, it seems likely that (in human brains) this property will mostly store an exponent rather than trying to determine an exact number.I expect this can get extremely complicated in a human brain! Evolution isn’t much for intra-system optimization just for efficiency’s sake, after all.