The Power of Mind

Long time ago, I visited a well-known cave in Shan State with my grandpa. Inside the cave, there is a tunnel, which is said to be connected to the ancient city called Bagan.

I asked my grandpa, "Grandpa, wait a minute... Why did nobody enter the tunnel and confirm if the legend is true or not? Are we not supposed to do it?"

With a smile, Grandpa replied me, "Well... it is the unknown territory nobody dares to enter..."

Similarly, Mind is the closest thing to us, yet it is still the most unknown of all things in the universe. What is mind? Well, it doesn't matter, does it?

Although I am not so sure, as far as I can tell, the first great philosopher who studied Mind systematically is Buddha. He proposed the definition of system of mind and body, and also He also differentiates mind and body, which are analogous to modern terms software and hardware.

Buddha suggested Mind is the interconnected system of bodies of consciousness, memory, emotions and a complex system of actions and responses. In Vipasana meditation, to be able to understand the basic of mind and body and the interconnection of 5 aggregates of mind and body is highly important.

However, instead of achieving Enlightenment, I am more interested in Buddha's way of studying Mind, comparable to modern scientific way of studying robotics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science and neuroscience.

Nowadays, computers are more than computational devices - they have become more like thinking devices, which can assist people's day-to-day activities in various ways. Needless to say, computers are becoming smarter and smarter, and making it narrower the boundary of machine and human intelligence. However, the big question is can a machine think like a human?

Before delving into the machine intelligence, it is worth examining what is human intelligence anyway? Are humans really intelligent? Well, I am afraid not... We are not as smart as we think we are. Actually, our stupidity is as big as our intelligence.

To understand the human intelligence, the western school of philosophy put a great emphasis on reasoning. Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer et al primarily supported the reasoning power of human mind, and they believed that reasoning is the only way of achieving the so-called Enlightenment which can free us from the defilement.

On the contrary, Buddha never put an emphasis on reasoning, and he did not even mention reasoning in the system of bodies of mind. However, he put a great emphasis on emotions, interaction, and consciousness. And he also gave a lot of examples that we can only reason what we know and we cannot reason what we don't know.

To go back to why philosophy of reasoning has become so important is because of classical mechanistic way of analysis and computation. During that time, theories of science were based on classical mechanics - which analyze the systems in components and in deterministic way. To understand the whole system, we break down it into pieces and if we understand individual pieces, and then we can understand the whole system.

Needless to say, the philosophy of reasoning fails when the science discovers more about uncertainty - which is one of the fundamental truths of nature - nothing is certain.

Emotions are more important and necessary than reasoning to deal with uncertainty. As Descartes said, "I think therefore I am", we can only known our existence through our awareness of ourselves, and nothing else is so sure. Therefore, emotions play an important role to deal with uncertainty. Unlike reasoning, emotions are uncertain, unpredictable, trail-and-error and impulsive in nature.

Buddha generally divided emotions into two groups: negative emotions and positive emotions, and both are equally important in driving our desires, our thoughts and even our reasoning.

Emotions and Consciousness is not controllable - which is another fundamental truths of nature - nothing is controllable. For example, when we are angry, we only know we are angry after we feel angry. We don't know in advance we are going to be angry or how long we will be angry. Interestingly, once we know we are angry, we are not as angry as we were. Emotions cannot be controlled, but they can be observed, which can lessen the intensity of emotions.

Along with memory and a complex system of actions and responses, emotions and consciousness make up the human mind; in other words, human intelligence.

Although software is pretty much analogous to Mind, such as they are abstract, ubiquitous, transferable, conceptual and so on, there is a fundamental difference between software and Mind. Software cannot be aware of itself.

Since software is not self-aware, it is more deterministic than Mind. Software is highly algorithmic, which is more or less predefined and predetermined. Since software is more deterministic and algorithmic, it cannot deal with uncertainty and variety very much. It is also the fundamental weakness as well as the fundamental strength of software, compared to Mind.

Computational Complexity defines the limit on software computation capabilities. The more factors it requires to calculate, the more complex the computation is and it eventually reaches to the extent that the software cannot calculate anymore within the limited resources and time. In fact, computational complexity also defines the limit to algorithmic and deterministic computations.

However, human mind evolves in such a way that when the reasoning power of human reaches the maximum computational complexity i.e., when the human mind is dealing with a lot of uncertainties and factors, the emotions override the reasoning and try to solve the problems in order to avoid dead-lock or system crash. Therefore emotions play a really important role in decision making of human beings. Generally, when the situations are more certain, human beings are less emotional and when the situations are more uncertain, human beings tend to be more emotional.

Another interesting thing is emotions are highly interconnected with creativity since creativity involves high uncertainty. Generally speaking, humans are more emotional and creative beings compared to other creatures. In fact, Literature and Arts primarily take advantage of uncertainty to invoke the emotions in human beings.

Nowadays, computers can follow very logical reasoning in a very deterministic way; however, they still cannot think like human beings as to deal with uncertainty and creativity. So far, it is almost impossible or really difficult to implement artificial emotions. However, there is a hope for dealing with uncertainty - a new field of computing i.e., quantum computing.

Therefore, as far as of I can tell, the power of human mind does not come from its intelligence, but from its creativity. Given certain resources and power, and some rules to restrain, the human beings will be able to apply different ways of using resources and power, and finally overcome the rules. I believe it is the true power of human mind, which set different from other beings and machines.

Posted in: Thoughts