Bayes Plays Canasta in Monte Carlo

In the mind in our brains, a special network of neurons constructs the present moment. The present moment is flashed on the wall of the Plato's Cave. These flashes of the stuff of thought are embodied in three seconds of working memory, a structure in the brain devoted to guessing in a least worse manner. What happens next depends on geography, architecture, city, state, nation and imagination. I step to the window and bet on a horse to win every three seconds. I am guessing that you do not read the next sentence and fly into a rage. The world is made of atoms. You would agree more or less and we could move on.

What Time is it?

On an interval of time, the mind mingles with the world outside which is awash in sensations. The domesticated primate, the domesticated cattle, sheep, pigs, llamas, water buffalo and goats along with potatoes, tulips and other crops made a challenge to each other to fuel an updraft of better guesses about what happens next by living together as an ensemble of phenotypes. Time was measured by the rising and setting of the sun; this is Near Time. Time was measured by the seasons; this is Far Time.

Herding brought permanent settlements and extended the Now to a more complex Far Now. We see Near and Far, Past and Future as a series of smooth durations of time. Our Far Past flows into our Near Past which butts up against Now which leads to the Near Future . The Near Future progresses toward a planned and expected Far Future. We grant all of these durations or spans of time equal participation with the Now.

But time, we suppose, marches on in a smooth ribbon or swoosh toward the future and away from the past. Further, we suppose that we have free will to decide what happens next and we would not send that job to some damn neurons. In fact time, as experienced by domesticated primates, subverts the reality of space-time by hijacking cognitive means evolved for older problems. I am my grandparents response to natural selection  on their milieau interior (inside their skin) residing in the cosmic environment (outside their skins).  3.5B years of selection pressure produced memory and cognition which 'builds time' by imagining a past and imagining a future which balance on the fulcrum of the specious present. These are the mind hacks that support my intuitions about how to advance my genome into my mental model of my future. The mental model I hold in my head is a reflection or representation of the universe. The universe -- the real and lasting authentic Universe -- contains an ensemble of fermions and bosons (me) that hold a representation of the universe. In turn, my model of the universe includes a module comprising a version of me in the model universe with a model of the Real Universe embedded. But how do I hold all that in my mind in my brain? Why didn't my grandfather have this model in his head?

Consider this fact. Were I not more than the sum of my genes, these words might not be written. What I write now will never go away because it resides in the --->

Plex

If anyone should read this or link to my blog my page-rank might explode (or not) and I would go viral (or not). Enter contingency, or Dame Fortuna's notice. My mental model of the universe matches the Real Universe more closely than my grandfather's inarticulate ruminations about reality. That is because I outsource cognition and memory to Steven Pinker, Brian Green, Richard Dawkins and all the rest to Wikipedia, facebook, LinkedIn and Reddit.

This is my extended genome; the electric grid, the flat panel manufacturers, Intel and Microsoft. Instead of some damn neurons, it turns out that we operate from moment to moment on a substrate of carbon and silicon. The Techium, the admixture of biology and technology supports Kirk 3.0, an emergent imagination machine. But the job remains the same -- guessing what happens next.

The Guessing Robot

Bayesian causal networks support our minds in our brains. These structures, made from meat, exist for predicatively emitting behaviors that result in nothing much happening really. I live to fight another day if I go fishing or play Deus Ex on my XBox today. My least worst guesses maintain homeostasis, with lowest energy for making guesses, until I successfully pass my genes on to the next generation. This behavior gives us the fittest guesses about how to keep anything overly exciting happening for as long as possible. If successful we can continue to make the least worse guesses about the next three second interval -- the coming specious moment.. This behavior depends on the correct cognitive output from the Causal Bayes Network of neurons.

I suggest here a model of cognition with a three layer cache of memory and combinatorics sufficient to make good guesses. These guesses, produced from meat running Bayesian hypothesis trials, depend on a first layer, a second layer and a third layer. The first layer is working memory and, as stated, handles three second slices of sensation (raw input). A vast amount of this input is ignored in each time period so that the least amount of energy is expended in building the extra neurons needed for more complex rationalization of the present.

"what is, bifurcations in the logistic map?"

The second layer is short term memory with a half life of 24 hours. Garbage collection or dreaming filters this content before it is mapped to existing memestrates. That is, a review of the day during dreaming projects short term memory onto existing structures in long term memory. New memories are actively changing old memories -- cache coherence is preserved between these two layers.

DNA and XNA arrived at a similar solution for computing conceptual semantic representations of the past, the present and the future. Information passing is parsimonious; most input is filtered out.

Note that a vast amount of human behavior depends on much finer granularity of decision making that three second bursts. Like hitting a fast pitch, most reflex action is handled by cognitive machinery at the periphery -- muscle memory is required to shoot a hoop or touch type. This activity, once practiced to the point of autonomic response, does not rise to the level of consciousness. Thinkers avoids thinking too many thoughts by behaving in most cases without thought. Fingers and toes make their own guesses about what happens next without the mother ship.

"is tomorrow going to look like today?"

The stochastic decision making looks remarkably like a Monte Carlo simulation. The ensemble of Bayesian machines -- these robots -- perceive the initial condition (first hypothesis) of a scene in the present. We have a subjective experience of  breaking with the past and restarting the clock when we walk through doors (for example). This is akin to not seeing yourself blink (for example). Our first conjecture assesses the base rate of the state of the previous moment against all prior experience in memory. Mental time is inverted; the mental present results from an earlier present aka 'the past' or recently retired specious present.

If you enter an abandoned warehouse and discover a zombie infestation, the base rate for a survival hypothesis, measured from the energy of the change of state in the cosmic environment 'required' for making guesses about what happens next, against the energy required to conquer zombies or run from zombies. We most likely will require a jolt of adrenaline and endorphins flooding the brain with either the 'kill zombies' conjecture or the 'flee zombies' hypothesis. This situation, resulting from seeming maladaptive guesses about what happens next (entering a deserted warehouse) , requires expensive BTU's that could be spent in leisure given a decision to avoid the warehouse. The more fit behavior expends vanishingly small amounts of energy keeping up with what little is going on now that the kids have moved out.

oral fixation

In the next interval of the present, the probability of the new data given the old data is computed. What happens between each Bayesian guess is that the cosmos throws the dice and a new present arrives from the future. The state of the cosmic environment where life is possible stays mostly the same from moment to moment. For this reason, the vast majority of the background is filtered. This is analog of a variance of a Monte Carlo variable has very little effect on the final result. The many branches at the many decision points are not contributors to many changes in behavior. Only a small fraction of the perceptual faculties are providing interesting cognitive fodder for the mill of the mind.

Finally, the fact that we process only what has already happened in a previous interval, this conjecture corrodes most notions of free will. What we have is free won't -- the faculty to overturn a prior decision to emit a different behavior than our instincts. We deny ourselves cheese cake of our volition; we desire the cheesecake from our experience. Sometimes the veto is upheld and sometimes we eat the damn cheesecake. We are guessing that we will increase our gratitude by one fork of the branch or the other.

We are constantly guessing a prosperous future without lifting a pinky finger. Rinse and repeat.