That’s a fair point, but I guess I don’t see how what you’re describing is therefore a new model of thinking. If thinking is serial while irrational, impulsive action is non-serial, then the non-serial model of psychology doesn’t come into conflict with the serial model of thinking. They could both be true.
Also, I sometimes feel like we should taboo the whole computer metaphor of thought. Hardware, software, glitching, etc.
I don’t believe that the rational thinking can be serial, that is my point. Consider an un-obvious solution to a problem—a good effective solution. There has to be a search in the vast solution space, to arrive at this solution. The search that human brain can only perform in parallel, by breaking apart the space and combining results. When this search ignores important part of solution space you may end up with solution that is grossly suboptimal or goes against what you believe is your goals. Meanwhile, the serial, deliberate thought—it is usually impossible to enumerate all possible solutions and compare them in any reasonable time—one can compare some of the solutions deliberately, but those are picked by a parallel process which one can’t introspect.
I did not mean to use words from CS in the metaphorical sense by the way. It’s just that computing technology is the field that has good words for those concepts.
That’s a fair point, but I guess I don’t see how what you’re describing is therefore a new model of thinking. If thinking is serial while irrational, impulsive action is non-serial, then the non-serial model of psychology doesn’t come into conflict with the serial model of thinking. They could both be true.
Also, I sometimes feel like we should taboo the whole computer metaphor of thought. Hardware, software, glitching, etc.
I don’t believe that the rational thinking can be serial, that is my point. Consider an un-obvious solution to a problem—a good effective solution. There has to be a search in the vast solution space, to arrive at this solution. The search that human brain can only perform in parallel, by breaking apart the space and combining results. When this search ignores important part of solution space you may end up with solution that is grossly suboptimal or goes against what you believe is your goals. Meanwhile, the serial, deliberate thought—it is usually impossible to enumerate all possible solutions and compare them in any reasonable time—one can compare some of the solutions deliberately, but those are picked by a parallel process which one can’t introspect.
I did not mean to use words from CS in the metaphorical sense by the way. It’s just that computing technology is the field that has good words for those concepts.