Your 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 reply and here we are.
I have been thinking about thought processes as a dynamic process where a “current thought” moves around 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 as illustrated with the first sentence.
Examples of smaller temporary attractors are the current task one is working on right now and that one keeps getting back to after short distractions such as a sound or an impulse. Such as writing this post and continuing it after hearing my kids talk and quickly listening in or after scratching my head. 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).
The biggest attractor is one’s identity. One’s thinking about what you are and what one wants to do.
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.
Your idea black holes sound very much like larger instances of these attractors esp. if they are shared by multiple people and reinforced by the shared environment.
Your 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 reply and here we are.
I have been thinking about thought processes as a dynamic process where a “current thought” moves around 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 as illustrated with the first sentence.
Examples of smaller temporary attractors are the current task one is working on right now and that one keeps getting back to after short distractions such as a sound or an impulse. Such as writing this post and continuing it after hearing my kids talk and quickly listening in or after scratching my head. 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 and that tends to reinforce itself. Scott Alexander has described depression as some kind of mental attractor.
The biggest attractor is one’s identity. One’s thinking about what you are and what one wants to do.
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.
Your idea black holes sound very much like larger instances of these attractors esp. if they are shared by multiple people and reinforced by the shared environment.