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Saturday, April 6, 2013

Television Analogy of the Mind

As you may have seen in prior posts, I'm firmly rooted in a physicalist, reductionist view on things. When it comes to consciousness, or the workings of a mind in general (not just human), I see it's source as a collection of immensely intricate interactions among neurones, brain chemicals, external (environmental and experiential), and internal (amount of sleep, what you ate, levels of various hormones, etc.) states.
A useful if not overly simplistic analogy I have come up with to describe my view of apparent conscious behaviour I call the TV Analogy. I liken the pixels of a TV screen to the firing of neurones, and the input cable as external stimuli. As the TV receives information from the input cable, the state of it's pixels is changed thereby creating an overall change in what appears on the TV from the point of an outside observer. As this continually happens, we are given the illusion of motion and 'livelihood' to what is displayed.
I find this mirrors well (again, enormously oversimplified), with the action of the brain and its effect on apparent behaviour. As new external stimuli is received, the state of the brain is changed at the neuronal level, thereby changing the internal mental state and behaviour of the being. The sensory nerves and organs of the body act like the input cable, and the neurones and ultimate behaviour that they cause, can be equated with the TV display.

Friday, April 5, 2013

Bird Watching: A Guide to Geordie Girls

I occasionally watch the show 'Geordie Shore' with my girlfriend. If you haven't seen it it's Jersey Shore for the British. At times much of what they say is fairly unintelligible because of heavy slang and accent. What really got me thinking is their slang for girls. When they go out on the town for a night of binge drinking, vaguely rhythmic moving, and drama inducing belligerence, the main goal of the 'Lads' is always to 'pull birds'. At first I thought that it wasn't so different to being called 'chicks'. I was clearly overlooking the chance for something far greater though. There is a plethora of books on the market today that are on ridiculous subject matter but very entertaining, and excellent novelty items. So, I thought to myself, why not a book with the clever title 'Bird Watching: A Guide to Geordie Girls'. All it would be is a collection of pictures of Newcastle and Tyneside women enjoying the night life, their signatures, and maybe a blurb about what they enjoy best about the local nightlife. Throw in a couple glamour shots at some notable locations and you've got yourself a book! I'd love to hear people's reactions to this, especially as a UK or particularly a Geordie native if you happen across this.