Processing chain #

Introduction #

The ouruborus of perception is based on movement through time. What happens and how we respond to it is thoroughly intertwingled in time.

The actual processing — whether done in this moment or a series of moments, or even non-sequential moments — is itself a complexity. #

We, as a species, have a pretty standard toolkit. That doesn’t mean that things outside this toolkit don’t exist or can’t be developed. These are simply the tools that most of us have access to, like how it’s fairly probable that a person can reasonably easily lay their hands on a hammer, screwdriver, and ruler.

The environment is really complex, but in some ways it’s easier — as an individual — to simply shift over to another immediate environment. Move, change friends, switch jobs, something. That doesn’t mean any of these things are easy, just that in comparison to changing other things they can be easier.

Our reactions are complex, too. Trust and emotions need really big happenings — epiphanies and trauma — to shift that immediate reaction. It’s often easier to make a mental tag to hold or discount certain emotions than it is to not have them. Same with trust. Uncle Whosit is your favorite, bar none. According to some of our cultures, part of respecting him is to trust him, even when he’s sharing categorically wrong information. 

The other links fall somewhere between dissolving a marriage and learning to distrust Uncle Whosit in how easy they are to change over time. Which is a roundabout way of saying they can change, just don’t think you can do it and stick to it forever more after five minutes. Reforming habits takes time.

The processing link types #

Research is continually being added #

Core precepts #

AKA the beliefs that guide our behavior and actions

Diving deeper

Cognitive biases #

AKA shortcuts from data acceptance to passed-on information

Diving deeper

Memory #

AKA leveraging what’s come before to moderate and forecast

Diving deeper

Mental models #

AKA the architecture we use to relay understanding to similar objectives

Diving deeper

So, which to use? #

We rarely think about it. We pick, mostly, what’s worked for us before or what we see working for others. We test and iterate based on memory and the moment we’re experiencing right now — at least until we get into deeper movements.

Which tools we lean into is affected by our ouruborus of perception. It’s skewed by what has traction with our particular biology, sociology, environment, and processing. 

I know someone absolutely brilliant who has a memory that he doesn’t trust. Instead, he’ll focus on the process of the steps he made before — mental models — and focus on the patterns. Not in order, not by rote, not in memory, but as the look/feel/texture/etc. of the pattern starts pulling into place and he feels more calm; or that’s how I read his expression. He didn’t have dementia, didn’t have any neural issues, just not as strong a memory for details as he believed others had. So he didn’t trust it, and focused on other aspects of his processing chain. 

Another person has her emotions so dialed in that she trusts them over her processing chain. Anger, delight, worry — she’ll follow any of them into data as a starting point. Part of this is that she understands her own emotions to a nuanced level. Part of it is, I think (but I may be confabulating!), that she’s developed self-awareness over time by studying her emotions in retrospect and aligning them with other data coming in. It works for her.

Now, I know another person who follows his emotions — especially his anger — and somehow makes mistake after mistake. His regrets are many and varied, yet he still can’t get out of his own way. He’s still making more decisions based on his emotions than his processing chain. He’s still surviving day after day, decade after decade. He rarely gets to access his flow state, though.

Another person understands her core precepts first and foremost. Her memory is strong, she has cognitive biases and leverages mental models with agility and nuance — but every step along the way she’s focused on her core precepts. That’s her primary lens, and her ethics are amongst the most tightly held I’ve had the honor to see.

Another person trusts his cognitive biases more than anything else. Emotions are deliberately set aside, and that dissociation is part of his training. Mental models might skew a process and are shied away from for it; core precepts have been built into his cognitive biases by decades of professionals that came before him. Memory is only as useful as accessing the right data, and its life or death to access the right data so he’s leaned into what’s safest: cognitive bias. The largest part of this is his profession, but there’s a reason he’s accepted and thrived in that profession.

None of these people live entirely in these patterns. The angry person can find his flow state, but it’s rare. The emotionally dialed-in person can spelunk in data with ease even when she’s not following the scent of her emotions. The process-oriented person still follows the spark of his memory. 

Which links are used are contextual, with a bias towards what amounts to deeply ingrained habit. That habit became ingrained for any number of reasons, but built up over time and was probably supported by a dopamine shot based on the experience of success.

Another nod towards the unwritten movements #

We are none of us locked into place. We are, however, constrained by our biology and our self awareness, and working within our environment.

That person who lives in anger? He will live in anger to the end of his days until and unless he starts living beyond the snap of time, stops trying to just keep on keeping on. There are any number of reasons why he resorted to anger as his primary interface with the world. It could be driven by psychology, but it could also be driven by biology or environment. Biologically, anger is an energy resource — nothing can get a body up and moving as easily as anger.

Environmentally, anger can be a very reasonable reaction to manipulation and injustice. If someone is dark triad, anger could erupt out of frustration that their manipulations aren't working, or purely as an effective manipulation tool itself. 

We are also constrained by our cognitive load. The heavier the load the harder it is to maintain even what you consider ‘normal’. Our cognitive loads are multivariate, too. It can be increased by how much information is coming at you. It’s predicated on whether your cognitive biases are helping or hindering in a specific situation, or even if you are trying to wrestle out of them. The load can be increased by how many information architectures you are flipping through, how quickly, and with how much help by contextual prompts and how recently you’ve flipped through them. 

In short, a person’s cognitive load is impacted by data, connectome, understanding, behavior, self awareness, time, space, and the movement through all of these. Probably a few more, too, but these are the big ones.

We are not improbable during the snap in time. Our improbability doesn’t really kick in until we consider our billions, and through time, and our individual ability to decide a different path than the past dictates. We learn and adap, and mostly get along. That’s where our improbabilities live.