The Leverage and Centrality of Mind by Alexander Hoekstra and Preston Estep

In my own research the best way to make our brains work better is to focus on serving our basic needs (as first introduced by Maslow), with the highest quality inputs and outputs possible. Everything else just wastes resources, as far as I've seen. Our brains are biological systems that need certain things to work properly, but I've yet to meet a human being who's even getting their first two levels of physical needs met well enough, though most folks aren't even aware of the deficiencies and toxicities that they're suffering from (which only exacerbates the problem...).

So, health care is indeed the core solution, IF we include all the basic needs for human health, unconditionally, in our universal health care! That means high quality food, water, air, warmth (including shelter), light, information, and outlets for freely expressing our body's excess solids, liquids, gases, and energy. Only then will we have well functioning human beings, mentally and physically, so that we're operating at peak capacity as a planet.

Hi Preston,

You eloquently describe in detail how the broad ability of the human mind is the underlying driver behind our ability to deal with virtually all modern problems. In particular I found very interesting the part where you mentioned how we may tend to defer direct access to information and rely on social information when confronted with certain resource constraints.

I think you're writing is very good, but I feel in a way you are simply saying that 'if we were smarter we would be better at solving our problems'. You're discussion of how that might occur hinted at something interesting, but I feel it didn't really explore the HOW as it might have. Two issues occur to me (1) mental health is sometimes focused around achieving normality rather than improving cognitive functions - how would you change its approach? (2) How would we separate intervening to make someone 'smarter' with intervening to alter a person to agree with a particular social or political agenda?

Thanks for writing a good quality paper I will be giving it an above average rating once I finish reading!

Also I'm interested if you have any thoughts on my paper, particularly in regard to the part on VR. Thanks again!

And apologies for my awful grammar! :)

Dear Alexander Hoekstra and Preston Estep,

I read your essay with great interest, because it concerns fundamental questions linked with the development and survival of the human race, forced to deal with increasingly more difficult challenges. It is without doubt that the improving the qualities and the independents of the mind is a good suggests a better future.

And although in a relatively short essay a major issue, such as this, cannot be examined in its full complexity and depth, you managed in the smartest way to provoke the minds of the intelligent to think.

Petio Hristov

Hi,

it occurred to me that in several observations your very interesting essay overlaps, or tightly relates with the essay by Sabine Hossenfelder. For example, you write:

"Here is a key question: why should we try to cope with modern, complex civilization, using brains provided by nature for use in a simpler time; brains that have been shaped and constrained by forces that are either already or quickly becoming irrelevant?"

This resonates with her concept (at p. 1):

"The root of the problems that humanity faces today is that our adaptation as a species has fallen behind the changes we have induced ourselves."

However, your proposed solution is:

The most efficient and generalizable solution to all human problems is to enhance our fundamental abilities to solve problems.

Her conclusions are rather different, and perhaps more surprising. To know how . . . take a look at her essay! (Sabine, you now owe me a rating :-)

A small question. You seem to prefer the term `mind` over `brain`. Are you implying some important difference between the two?

Best regards

Tommaso

Hi Alex,

You framed well the need to change the mind to better address identifying and addressing perceived global needs.

I tend to agree with you that certain mental processes that are common to being human can better serve humanity, but I think a more important consideration is the "collective mind" of people, the social interactions that we can control. We need a diversity of brain structures to support a diversity of tasking needed by society.

The diversity of environments in which a person lives fundamentally influences the building blocks of the brain. For whatever reason, there is a city in Florida where I encountered a much larger percentage of people with mental disabilities than I have encountered anywhere else. I'm not mentioning the city's name for ethical reasons related to economics and perception, and the potential for my perception being from other influences I am unaware of.

Selenium trace elements are beneficial for the growth of the brain. But selenium is completely devoid in certain areas, so those living in those regions without taking supplements, or eating foods containing selenium from other areas, will have certain differences in their brain as a result.

However, evolutionary genetic changes coupled with integration between persons from different environmental influences, creates a mutation in the form of the molecules that support and bind genes; i.e. environmentally influenced gene splicing.

Because we do not understand how to make a better mind, we do not even know how the mind produces intelligence, we cannot engineer a brain that will be the best in which everyone will have their brain manipulated to meet that specification.

I am not sure of the significance of potential tertiary developments of brains that have ADHD, Autism, nutritional deficiencies, ... as contributors to building brains that have certain advanced capabilities to support certain needs of society. That over many generations produce a better mind for some specific tasked need of humanity.

For example, I loath repetition. I absolutely abhor any repeated tasks. But to work on an assembly line, be a clerk, operate a nuclear reactor... all requires a mind with capabilities to endure repetition, and perhaps even enjoy it.

So I don't believe having one model of brain best fits the needs of society.

However, I believe as you stated, that society currently has dominant unmet needs related to critical thinking, and predicting consequences. I would NOT go so far to say that persons unable to significantly acquire these abilities are without useful purpose to humanity. They and their offspring will likely provide support for certain social system developments that would otherwise be difficult to support, and that drive humanities moral compass. Our social processes are quite complex. Each social group has dominant mental requirements for inclusion, yet social system tasking depends in-part upon a large diversity of social groups and differing categories of mental capacities.

If you want to increase the dominance of critical thinking and predicting consequences, start teaching them in graduated detail in public schools. Beginning in pre-school and advancing complexity and detail through all classes until high school graduation.

Hmmm, I just realized that High School is an outdated term that is currently misleading.

If you have the desire to apply your related interest, see UA-KiTS.com

Dear Mr. Hoekstra and Dr. Estep,

I regret that your inaccurate abstractions filled essay depressed me more than any other essay that has been published at this site.

Real women are only capable of giving birth to real babies that have real brains. Each real baby's brain is unique, once. Here you are pretending that you "know" what minds are made of and how they ought to work.

James Watson was only partially correct, it is not a case of "most scientists being stupid" all scientists are stupid because they only believe in abstractions. Abstractions are not unique. Abstractions have nothing to do with reality.

Joe Fisher

Dear Tommy,

Thank you for reading our essay; we're glad you're in agreement with the main premise. How to go about making better minds is such an enormously complex topic that we thought it best to simply begin by making the argument we did, i.e. that it is the most efficient way to approach humanity's many disparate problems. As your comment affirms, this would seem to be fairly obvious, but our essay appears to be the only one in this competition to explicitly advance this proposal (although a few others focus on better thinking).

Dear Turil,

We agree that many people are operating at low efficiencies on multiple levels. But we also believe that people functioning at their peak aren't either necessarily or sufficiently able to sustain humanity's current trajectory. People's brains (and general biology) have been selected for a slower and simpler time, and are maladapted to the complex world we have created. We simply don't have the rational foresight to manage this complexity. To survive and thrive we need to design and engineer minds specifically for this purpose.

Dear Ross,

Thank you for reading our essay and thank you very much for your kind words. How to go about making better minds is such an enormously complex topic that we thought it best to simply begin by making the argument we did, i.e. that it is the most efficient way to approach humanity's many disparate problems. As your comment affirms, this seems somewhat obvious, but our essay appears to be the only one in this competition to explicitly propose this as a general solution (although a few others focus on better thinking).

You raise two important and challenging issues. First, how to achieve levels of ability beyond normalcy is a key and difficult question. Nevertheless, there are some clues to how such things might be accomplished. For example, see this recent news article suggesting that reconfiguring the brain can release suppressed talents (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/brain-injury-jason-padgett-math-genius_n_5273609.html). Your second point is potentially even more challenging. We can only say that such questions are best answered at the highest levels with great deliberation. We envision and advocate an open, civilian project that would dwarf the space race. We need an international collaborative effort to tackle these issues, rather than leave mental enhancement to individual secret and military organizations around the world.

We'll take a look at your essay. Thanks again.

Dear Petio,

Thank you for taking time to read our essay and for understanding the limits of what we are able to address in the space available. Indeed, this is a major and complex issue. And thank you very much for your kind words.

Dear Mr. Fisher,

Thank you for your comments. We're sorry you are so displeased. Since you are already unhappy with our essay, we hope you don't mind much that we refer to your dismissal above and your own essay as Exhibit A and Exhibit B to support our case.

P.S., I will use the following rating scale to rate the essays of authors who tell me that they have rated my essay:

10 - the essay is perfection and I learned a tremendous amount

9 - the essay was extremely good, and I learned a lot

8 - the essay was very good, and I learned something

7 - the essay was good, and it had some helpful suggestions

6 - slightly favorable indifference

5 - unfavorable indifference

4 - the essay was pretty shoddy and boring

3 - the essay was of poor quality and boring

2 - the essay was of very poor quality and boring

1 - the essay was of shockingly poor quality and extremely flawed

After all, that is essentially what the numbers mean.

The following is a general observation:

Is it not ironic that so many authors who have written about how we should improve our future as a species, to a certain extent, appear to be motivated by self-interest in their rating practices? (As evidence, I offer the observation that no article under 3 deserves such a rating, and nearly every article above 4 deserves a higher rating.)

Indeed, and I see that the way to design more effective minds is to focus on how to give them the resources they need to grow healthfully. We have yet to have healthy brain development because we've either been suffering from deficiencies or toxicities, or both, but once we look to supporting our biology in getting the food, water, air, warmth, light, information, and ways to express excess stuff, we'll start to see both individual and collective brains truly achieve greatness. And yes, some of that will involve technology, both adding to our biology internally, and connecting our ideas externally with some artificial intelligence sort of element, I imagine. But again, at the core of all this is supporting the biology, so that it no longer is held back by low quality crap mucking up the system, and getting in the way of our brains honestly functioning at their peak, and able to do all sorts of things that no one imagined humans might be able to do.

Dear Hoekstra, Preston,

I must say am happy I got to read your essay. It was erudite.

But your view of the human mind is very much that of sabine hossenfelder's essay. And her's even goes ahead to show how we may "improve" (meddle) with the brain unlike yours (thankfully).

It seems to me such views as expressed by your two essays stem from putting way too much weight on the present understanding of Darwin's theory of evolution. This theory is not even "quantized" yet. Here is what I mean, any progression (picture a stair case) can be viewed MINIMALLY in two ways: as an ascendance (in the Darwinian sense that the mind has evolved from lower life and hence will continue to evolve; as negative entropy) or as a descendance (in the sense of entropy in 2nd law of thermodynamics so that the mind is an ideal state like ideal gas which observably degrades into non-life phenomena).

These two views are not choice to be made, they are LOGICAL NECESSITY; any successor function must have this dual property (similar to a wave/corpuscular nature). So Darwin's theory is only one side of the picture, it is classical; it has yet to be "quantized".

However, your basic thesis is to me most inspiring namely: to manage the future of man we must manage his mind/mindset. You say, "Minds are central; they are the foundation of humanity's past, its present, and its future. Human minds are the root cause of all problem-solving inefficiencies, but they are also the only creative engines capable of taking on each of these challenges, and of designing and building a better future."

I think your essay deserves better rating and am going to give it but I'll appreciate your own critique of my own approach

to this subject.

Best,

Chidi

Dear Alexander and Preston,

As, Observational science is prime for all scientific developments; your conclusion on science that is young, indicates that the Observational science is not matured enough to proceeds with further scientific developments, though the technological developments is on proliferation.

This is causal for the imperfections in technological developments that effect re-engineering and constant up-gradations, causing environmental degradation, economic impairment and wastage of human efforts.

For the development of observational science, defining the nature and emergence of time is much imperative, in that I agree mind is central to analyse the past with the present for predicting the future.

Thus redefining the nature of matter to describe the emergence of time with the dynamics of the substrate of mind, is fundamental.

With best wishes,

Jayakar

Alex and Preston,

Your focus on improving minds is noteworthy. All needs, problems and changes we face start there. Our current course has taken us closer to an environmental Armageddon. Our attitudes are comfort-based rather than long-term survival based.

Like your essay I speak to the mind as a microcosm of the universe, containing our past, present and our future. That is my "looking within" My "looking beyond" involves an escape from solar-system-based thinking.

The changes we need do start with the mind.

Good job.

Jim

Alex and Preston,

The time grows short, and I need to revisit and rate. Preston, thanks for reading my essay.

Jim