Some thoughts on human brain process scheduling. (Reading Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now”)

As a general idea, the book is trying to teach adults how to de-overfit their brains.

This idea comes from machine learning, and also in the psychological teachings on “refreshing being”.

You might remember that for children the world seems more bright and full with things happening in it, than for adults. Why? Overfitting. The amount of information coming to our system did not change, but adults do not see a lot of that information as useful, and the brain “fits” to ignoring it.

The psychological training teaches the patients to start looking at familiar things as if they are alien, or, which is the same thing, as if a child is examining it, as a thing it has never seen before.

While this trick is useful, and it is worth practising it, the book made me think about various computational models present in the brain.

The “childhood” model, the one described above, is about “consciously observing the world”. In some sense it is the most de-fit algorithm in the brain, as it sees everything from an observation point, has the least amount of automation, and at the same time is fully obedient to the willpower.

Algorithms which require observation/investigation are very exhausting an energy-consuming, and many tasks just cannot be solved using conscious algorithms. (Do not ask a centipede which leg it needs to move next.)

However, algorithms which are “mostly automatic” are prone to all the issues that overfit neural networks encounter – they fail for new data.

Some algorithms work in the conscious, some work in sub-conscious, but not all algorithms which work in the consciousness are consciously ignited.

In fact, we have a lot of algorithms running in the conscious, mostly aiming at assessing the world around us or predicting the future, which are not consciously started.

For example, we are having a walk, but instead of enjoying the scenery, we are thinking over our failing relationship. Most often such thoughts “come by themselves”, and if we push our brain a bit, we can cast them off.

Tolle is saying that most such algorithms are harmful, but I am not discussing good/bad here.

The point is that such algorithms should not be confused with “subconscious” algorithms, such as breathing or smelling. Breathing usually works without any conscious intervention at all, whereas smell works non-interactively “most” of the time, but not all – sometimes a strong smell hits our nostrils, and we suddenly become aware of it.

Surprise: not all subconscious algorithms are automatic.

Example: Ramanujan, who saw solutions to mathematical problems while sleeping. Most clearly he was also working on those problems during the day, but since he manually started those conscious solution-searching algorithms, they moved to subconscious when he slept, but continued working.

I am not sure whether emotions are algorithms. Sometimes we analyse something, see it as unworthy, and feel disgust, so an emotion can be are a result of a voluntary or a compulsive conscious algorithm.

This is not necessary, however, as sometimes we feel emotions coming from the subconscious.

Most of the book is really about getting rid of “compulsive thinking”, that is, conscious automatic algorithms, such as “worry” or “waiting for something”.

I am not ready to agree with him on this.

Most “self-help” and “spirituality” books are worthless from the point of view of applying their recommendations, but they are useful in seeing what really bothers people.

1. Worry, expectations, and similar “compulsive thinking”.
2. Emotional outbursts, uncontrolled emotions.
3. Relationships with opposite sex, feeling “not whole”.
4. Unhappiness with the body.
5. The issue of mind-body separation (hardware/software), whether it exists.
6. Salvation, the feeling of guilt/sin.
7. Hopeless situations, such as being stuck on a bad job.

The books also tells about a few “spiritual practices”, which should help the readers combat “compulsive thinking” and “automatic emotions” in order to better control themselves.