Human intelligence

The human mind is a particularly difficult thing to understand, but it is the best example we have of intelligence with intentionality. The brain appears to achieve this through a massive structure of neural networks which are able, over time, to effectively interpret sensory data in order to understand and predict the perceived environment - more usually our external world. Thus, research into evolving hardware and synthetic neural networks would appear a worthwhile endeavor. ^5-

Biological intelligence evolved through natural selection. It developed inside a mobile mechanical body with rich sense modalities and programmed survival instincts to grade the information flow. It is protected during a nurture phase where a subconscious computational process can learn to extract meaning from the sensory modality flow and bind the internal simulation architecture to the physics and object behaviors of the real world. This subconscious simulation builds a personal feeling of familiarity with the outside world. Otherwise each moment would forever seem strange and new as if being met for the very first time. Intelligence then develops gradually through continued interactions with the environment being compared to script predictions. The level of intelligence reached is based on both the initial biological construction and from subsequent interactions with the environment - nature and nurture.

A human infant, exposed to the outside world, gradually learns to interpret the 2D visual images into 3D virtual objects. This process is significantly aided through muscular feedback, mobility and the other sensory modalities, together with genetically inspired dedicated machinery for this purpose. The 3D objects, once extracted, exist not in isolation, but within their virtual environments and as animated scripts. These will gradually build up structured and cross linked historic memory records, forming an increasingly accurate world model. Objects have textures and behaviors (animated shape morphs and/or motion scripts), together with empathic emotional hues.

Intelligence, as such, begins to really kick in when a sufficiently detailed world model has formed and enough 3D object behaviors accumulated. The maturing mind can then focus more on the content than the 3D instantiation (sometimes referred to as binding - translating modality inputs to percepts).^6- An inner virtual world will come to map the external world, and the ability to notice and interpret anomalies between the two will increase; as will the ability to predict events from precedents.

The human mind - Learning

When a child awakes from sleep, her mind will resume the virtual model of her room and her waking eyes will orientate, texturize and track that model. She will experience a feeling of familiarity as her sensory flow matches the virtual model she holds in memory. As she moves, so the perspective of the model will too. In fact, a series of subconscious 3D script predictions will have pre-empted her motion even before she gets started. It will partly be those predictions that lead to her intentionality ^8- of action. As her eyes scan the visual scene, detailed 2D image data will paint accuracy into, and reinforce the authenticity of her virtual world. It is in this way that she is conscious she is in a room, and feels competent to negotiate reality.

The Human Mind - Free Will

An unconscious process runs memorized script behaviors ahead of real 'modality' time to generate as many predictive script estimates as time or satiation ^14- permit. The best case script can be used to form new learned memories or to animate physical action by aligning the virtual simulation to the modality inputs, linking the virtual body animation to motor control in the real body.

There are two priorities to human cognition. The first, mentioned above, is reactive thought, which involves negotiating real world environments, objects and people in real time. Here, the subconscious simulators may operate at maximum speed and concomitant reduction in accuracy. The simulations are generally bound to the real world through the modalities. The second, reflective thought, involves thinking by processing memory records, with limited or no external sensory perception, but with far greater depth and precision.

The content of reflective thought is based on simulations built from learned objects and behaviors acting on historic episodic scripts. Virtual in nature, these simulations will be time discontinuous for easier layering, merging and comparison - in order to discover relationships and metaphor. Cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment are extensively used to guide, grade and judge this script discovery process. They are synonymous to human emotions. Compared to reactive cognition, these simulations are not driven by exigencies from the outside world.

Other factors influencing this process are genetically derived biases carrying heavy emotional content (like fear of snakes, desire for the opposite sex etc.). Such imprints must surely have been written into memory by the genes and must also exist in the very same language as whatever instantiations the modalities cause. The fact that genetically derived instinctive triggers can be recognized and emotionally graded and responded to from untrained input, categorically implies a priori knowledge of that percept and of a common language for its recognition. For 2D visual input, where 2D images can so easily disguise content, 3D instantiation ^7- is by far the most credible link. Thus genetically derived instinctive imprints must have a direct correlation to our modalities - particularly vision, with the most likely common language being 3D instantiation.

The process of human learning is thus predicated on exposure to the real world through the sense modalities. The mind gradually builds historic records of familiar environments, 3D objects and features, with increasing fidelity. Adding more objects and details as time goes by. The power of time shifting, time discontinuity and layering/blending in virtual simulations leads to rational prediction and intelligent cognition. A side effect of this process is the seductive lure of unbinding the virtual models from real world physics and historically learned behaviors, and promoting instead, an internal world of fantasy. This process is further encouraged by the effects of biological feedback in the form of emotion. Human cognition is highly tuned to emotional cues within content, and uses them as short cuts to cognitive effort. Unbound simulations can thus be used to amplify emotion in a simulation. Presumably, attending to material survival have kept such processes in check.