Connectome is the fundamental structure #

People are pattern finders, so connectome gets tricky #

Connectome connects data and builds meaningfulness. This in turn helps us better understand the consequences of change and how it spreads. The primary information of connectome is pattern, in my opinion. 

People find patterns where they exist, and also where they don’t. We build them into everything we touch, whether the form is concrete (e.g., a house) or abstract (e.g., software).  We take patterns we like and apply them scattershot, whether it’s drawing rainbows on everything or seeing the world as a nail and you with a hammer. By the end of the day, we have all worked with patterns, someway and somehow — if only to make it to an appointment and say hi to someone (calendar, time, roadways, location precision, culture, language, who-ness — just for the obvious patterns).

When patterns are recognized, we get a scission of pleasure — a little dopamine spark that rewards us.  An easy-to-see pattern in an object gives us joy. When the pattern is hard won…haven’t you danced when you figured something out that had been intractable, when the pattern finally fell into place and was understood?

So, we are pattern finders, with a biologically-designed classical conditioning (aka Pavlovian) reaction in our everyday lives to continue trying to find patterns.

Ultimately, when we are trying to make sense of something, we are trying to understand the pattern of it. It has a whole story — who, what, when, where, how, why — that can be described, evaluated, contextualized, shared, and developed. That story and all the things we do with it is connectome.

We can get so intent on finding patterns that we create them without evaluation, and that’s where our cognitive information architectures can go awry. There are many flavors of this, and they involve who we are as people, our environments, and how we think.  While they are as complex and creative as people, there are a few that have strongholds within our social fabric.

It can be the source for conspiracy theories, filling too many gaps with connection that crack with critical thinking and stretch credulous evaluation. 

It’s used in adhering to what is ‘known’ even in the face of new information. If the patterns developed — whether personal stability, behavioral, procedural, cultural, or societal — are too brittle, structured, and held-together-with-hopes to bear change, the chaos of change can often be the first thing sensed.  Change sparks reactions in a great many of us: fight, flight, freeze.  Whether we fight the change, run away from change, or freeze in the face of change, it all results in trying to void change — to keep it from happening rather than endure the (suspected) chaos.

We’ve developed our pattern-making to such a degree that it signals the possibility of a survival tool. We’ve found how to layer it. We’ve developed tools based on it that have enabled us to circumscribe our planet.

It is in getting stuck too hard on patterns that are more imagination than information that we’re most likely to make the mistakes that could burn the world down.