This is slightly extended version of my comment on Idea Black Holes which I want to give a bit more visibility.
The prompt of an Idea Black Hole reminded me strongly of an old idea of mine. That activated a desire to reply, which led to a quick search where I had written about it before, then to the realization that it wasn’t so close. Then back to wanting to write about it and here we are.
I have been thinking about the brain’s may of creating a chain of thoughts as a dynamic process where a “current thought” moves around a continuous concept space and keeps spending much time in larger or smaller attractors. You know, one thought can lead to the next and some thoughts keep coming back in slight variations. I’m illustrating this with the sentence above.
Examples of smaller temporary attractors are the current tasks one is working on. For example, me writing this text right now. It is any task you are focused on and keep getting back to after short distractions such as a sound or an impulse. I’m writing this post and continue doing so even after hearing my kids talk and quickly listening in or after scratching my head, also after larger distractions such as browsing the web (which may or may not end up being related to the writing).
The thought “writing this article” is not a discrete thing but changes slightly with each letter typed and each small posture change. All of that can slightly influence the next word typed (like an LLM that has not only text tokens as inputs but all kinds of sense inputs). That’s why I say that concept space is continuous (and very high-dimensional).
An example of a medium size attractor is a mood such as anger about something, that keeps influencing all kinds of behaviors. It is an attractor because the mood tends to reinforce itself. Another example is depression. If you are depressed you prefer things that keep you depressed. Scott Alexander has described depression as some kind of mental attractor. It requires a bigger change or a resolution of the underlying cause to get out of the attractor.
With the medium-sized attractors, it is more intuitive to see the way that the feedback on thoughts acts and thereby creates the attractor. For small attractors, you may say: How is that an attractor? Isn’t it just a discrete unit of action we do? But consider procrastination: People seem to feel that something is pulling them away from the task they want to do or should do and instead toward some procrastination action, often a comfortable activity. That other activity is another attractor or rather both are forming a combined unstable attractor.
The biggest attractor is one’s identity. Our thinking about what we are and what we want to do. I think this one results from two forces combining or being balanced:
The satisfaction of needs. Overall and over a longer term, the brain has learned a very large pattern of behaviors that satisfy the sum of all needs (not perfectly, but as good as it has managed so far). Diverging from this attractor basin will lead to impulses that get back to it.
The feedback from others. Positive and negative feedback from other people and the environment overall contributes to th. The brain has learned to anticipate this feedback (“internalized it”) and creates impulses that keep us in positive states. As the brain prefers simpler patterns, this likely takes the form of a single attractor.
We are not permanently in the same attractor even if overall it “pulls” our thoughts back because a) our bodies and their states (hunger, tiredness, …) and b) our physical environment (physical location and other people) changes. Both extert a strong and varying influence and put us closer to one attractor state or another.
Society at large is influencing these attractors strongly, most prominently with the media. Meditation on the other hand reduces outside influence and kind of allows to create your own very strong attractor states.
More examples of attractor states are left as exercises for the reader.
Attractors in Trains of Thought
This is slightly extended version of my comment on Idea Black Holes which I want to give a bit more visibility.
The prompt of an Idea Black Hole reminded me strongly of an old idea of mine. That activated a desire to reply, which led to a quick search where I had written about it before, then to the realization that it wasn’t so close. Then back to wanting to write about it and here we are.
I have been thinking about the brain’s may of creating a chain of thoughts as a dynamic process where a “current thought” moves around a continuous concept space and keeps spending much time in larger or smaller attractors. You know, one thought can lead to the next and some thoughts keep coming back in slight variations. I’m illustrating this with the sentence above.
Examples of smaller temporary attractors are the current tasks one is working on. For example, me writing this text right now. It is any task you are focused on and keep getting back to after short distractions such as a sound or an impulse. I’m writing this post and continue doing so even after hearing my kids talk and quickly listening in or after scratching my head, also after larger distractions such as browsing the web (which may or may not end up being related to the writing).
The thought “writing this article” is not a discrete thing but changes slightly with each letter typed and each small posture change. All of that can slightly influence the next word typed (like an LLM that has not only text tokens as inputs but all kinds of sense inputs). That’s why I say that concept space is continuous (and very high-dimensional).
An example of a medium size attractor is a mood such as anger about something, that keeps influencing all kinds of behaviors. It is an attractor because the mood tends to reinforce itself. Another example is depression. If you are depressed you prefer things that keep you depressed. Scott Alexander has described depression as some kind of mental attractor. It requires a bigger change or a resolution of the underlying cause to get out of the attractor.
With the medium-sized attractors, it is more intuitive to see the way that the feedback on thoughts acts and thereby creates the attractor. For small attractors, you may say: How is that an attractor? Isn’t it just a discrete unit of action we do? But consider procrastination: People seem to feel that something is pulling them away from the task they want to do or should do and instead toward some procrastination action, often a comfortable activity. That other activity is another attractor or rather both are forming a combined unstable attractor.
The biggest attractor is one’s identity. Our thinking about what we are and what we want to do. I think this one results from two forces combining or being balanced:
The satisfaction of needs. Overall and over a longer term, the brain has learned a very large pattern of behaviors that satisfy the sum of all needs (not perfectly, but as good as it has managed so far). Diverging from this attractor basin will lead to impulses that get back to it.
The feedback from others. Positive and negative feedback from other people and the environment overall contributes to th. The brain has learned to anticipate this feedback (“internalized it”) and creates impulses that keep us in positive states. As the brain prefers simpler patterns, this likely takes the form of a single attractor.
We are not permanently in the same attractor even if overall it “pulls” our thoughts back because a) our bodies and their states (hunger, tiredness, …) and b) our physical environment (physical location and other people) changes. Both extert a strong and varying influence and put us closer to one attractor state or another.
Society at large is influencing these attractors strongly, most prominently with the media. Meditation on the other hand reduces outside influence and kind of allows to create your own very strong attractor states.
More examples of attractor states are left as exercises for the reader.