Ok, so with all the favorable responses I got in the last thread, I'm going to start posting my notes. My main goal in posting these notes it to get feedback, ideas, or just general ego-boosting. Take your pick. Remember, I have no formal education is cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience, or biology. I'm pulling this shit out of my ass based on observation. If something I say is reminscent of some well thought out/explored theories, please point me to them so I can read about them. Rather not reinvent the wheel so to speak, but I'm quite willing to logically deduce my own theories.
Also, I will refer to the "human organism" using machine pronouns (we are biological machines if you think about it), as I intend to be implementing this as an AI in the distant future, so all naming schematics will be machine related.
At the end of this, if you manage to be immune to TLDR, you'll see exactly what I mean by using the hacker mindset to deduce brain functionality. I've concluded that brand logos and geometric shapes are both stored in some type of "symbol" memory, rather than brand logos being in some other distinct separate data store in the brain.
3D Reality Formation (Awarness of External State):
All the senses combined (sight/smell/etc) combine to create the brains interpretation of reality. I will get more granular as these notes go further, but initially, All Senses -> Proccessing - > Reality Interpretation
Sight - Light waves to detect macro objects,
Scent - Detection of micro objects (molecular structures/contents)
Sound - Detection of mechanical energy at a higher frequency than can be felt by rest of peripheral nervous system
Taste - Detection of molecular structure, more sensitive than scent, but also satiates craving instructions (see below)
Tactile - In between macro and micro object discovery. More refined than light by it's ability to discern textures, density of objects (water/solid/gas), energy/heat transfer (temperature)
Self Awareness of Physical State (maintaining mechanical viability/Awareness of Internal State):
Hunger is an energy deficient. Most cravings (water, particular foods), I believe can be explained by a desire for certain nutrients the body is lacking or could be improved with. Pretty sure I've read about that before, not sure if it's been proven or not though/
Combined inputs from above give spatial location awareness, which is used in conjuction with self-awareness related inputs. Pain for instance is a very crucial self-awareness sense needed to maintin viability and prevent damage to the entity, and in conjuction with spatial awareness/reality interpretation from 3D Reality Formation process, a response to prevent injury can be determined. (Move away from the hot stove, not towards it).
Instructional Operations to increase survival probablity (and reproductive fitness in the case of organisms):
Hormonal system, instincts, emotions, I believe are the instructions given to our body's mechanical infrastructure. When your brain assess something as a risk (another module, future notes), the body fires off the instructions to tell it's parts how to respond. These are in the form of the stress/adrenaline related hormones (are they called hormones or susbtances or chemicals?). The instruction processors are located in the nervous system throughout the body, and receive these instructions and act accordingly. Cardiovascular system is stimulated to faciliate the fight or flight response, essential non-immediate survival processes are slowed down or stopped, the memory module starts recording more frames per second (slow motion feeling of an adrenaline rush, you replay your memory frame rate, but more frames were recorded inducing a perception of slow motion); which will be used to evaluate if anything could have been done better or what mistakes were made should the organism survive, and the brain goes into it's "tunnel vision" because you have one focus, survival.
Stress disorders seem the be a malfunction in this regard, where the risk threshold for firing this instruction set is far lower than it should be (provoking flight or fight responses over trival events/perceptions). I'd implement this programmatically as an event processing system, which goes through risk analysis checks every so often (or when unexpected/new perceptions are noticed, run the check immediately), and have a variable marking a threshold risk level where instructions are sent to rest of the mechanical structure to increase survival odds should the risk be well founded.
Next Topic...
So those are the three overhead modules, at the highest level, that I'd be implementing in this AI reimplementation of the brain. Being the highest level, they each will be composed of -many- parts and functionalities to a very micro level.
Here's an example, vision.
It appears to me we have 2 seperate visual "monitors" we have access to in our brain. The first is not consciously controllable, and it is a direct input with some additional processing to merge/interpret, what our eyes perceive. We can not consciouslly change what we perceive here, outside of changing the mechanical sensor equpiment, that is, we can't change the processing. I'll refer to this as the "Reality Vision"
The second one, is our internal imagination, which I'll call "Imaginary Vision". We draw from memories, and we can see images. We can even take an image of our surroundings given to us from our Realit Vision, and overlay it to allow for for prediction, planning, or just amusement.
Reality Vision obtains a very reliable view of the location of most objects, since majority of objects dense enough to be important to notice will be noticeable due to disturbances in light waves (difference between the light source and the object you're seeing being a combination of light missing that was aborbed and light visible that was reflected).
Psychedelics I believe interrupt the Reality Visions's processing functionality. Refresh rate can slow down leaving after-images (tracers). Merging of the images I'm not sure how it's effected you (need to pay attention to this next time I'm on them, closing one eye, and seeing if images alter in an unexpected way). Other things like shimmering of lights, and melting objects, things moving back and forth, are generated by a corruption of data most likely attributed to some of the processing formulas being skewed in one or another, and consistency of image (multiple sampled images frames over time to create a coherent visual field without blind spots by processing the data and filling in missing spots) is also corrupted causing melting/wiggling in objects. I'm currently under the belief those visuals are related to whatever processing the brain does to fill in missing data from blind spots using the stream of images coming in... that process is corrupting the Reality Vision returned. Another fact that leads me to believe this, is I can't see "melting" or "wiggling" if I'm constantly moving my eyes, or my visual field is in constant motion; the brain might not need to focus heavily on corrrecting blind spots when it has far more information coming in to give it an accurate picture, so that process is ignored and data from other samples is streamlined into the Reality Vision monitor.
Pattern recognition also seems to be affected. When you see something, and don't recongize exactly what it is right away, or mistake it for something else, essentially the object identification pattern matching functionality is being affected in unanticipated ways.
When you start perceiving sights in Reality Vision that are uncorrelated with any real object (rather than distortions of real objects), I believe this is caused by an overlay of the Imaginary Vision onto the reality vision (again, outside of concious control). Closed eye visuals make this most pronounced, as you're overlaying the imaginary vision on relatively blank background.
One thing I've noticed in one of my closed eye visuals, was this circle of "brands", all black (no color) and no shades, just solid black, with a glowing yellow background while they spun around. McDonalds, Apple, Windows, Chevy, lots of these simple solid symbols.
This leads me to believe that the geometric patterns that people perceive, may be coming from a certain part of the brain that handles "symbol/shape" recognition. Trapezoids, circles, rectangles, octogons, etc; can all be considered symbols. If you look at them as symbols rather than merely geometric shapes, and take the observation of brand symbols replacing geometric shapes with no color, rotating in a circle, this leads me to believe that brand logo recognition is stored in a very specific part of the brain that recognizes 2 dimensions symbols. A stop sign, a brand logo, and shapes, all have the same "cognitive pathway". This is also a prime example of what I mean by using the hacker mentality to deduce the underlying functionality of the brain. By provking a psychedelic state, I was able to see brand logos coming from a part of my brain that was also generating geometric shapes/patterns.
Thought provking question: What effect on psychology does brand symbols being stored in such a low level symbol recognition system have on our purchasing habits...
That's what I've written so far in my notebook, transcribed to be more readable rather than haphazard idea to paper ramblings.
I hope someone finds this interesting, and I hope now it's clear how the "hacker/software engineer" mindset + psychoactive susbtances can allow software engineers to create a software implementation of the human brain.
Humorous Post Scriptum: This post could also function as an "experience" report. Earlier took 220mg of MDMA, which for me, greatly increases my mental creativity, inspires me, and motivates me to do something with my thoughts. Use that substance as my "work stimulant" on occassions for this very reason, and this is the result.