Varied minds are, there is the DNA, the recombination, the neural unfolding (in the womb, and after birth), and there is the external environment, and more broadly the good works of culture.

Humans have a bunch of mind tools – evolved – experience and learning tune them up. Culture evolves too.

That humans are receptive to culture is a biological attribute, it was adaptive and selected for. The receptivity though involves discernments.

My question is of cognitive holes, not to be negatively over/emphasised, sort of meant in a soft (accommodating of a necessary variabilty) sense.

My view is there is no ultimate or nearing perfect computational apparatus. There is no ideal knowledge, no ideal knowledge structure, and no ideal applications. This probably also means there’s no ultimate efficiency of knowledge or its application.

Further to my question, is the idea that cognitive holes have an attraction. There are those of individuals, and perhaps too species-wide holes. People are in a way attracted toward cognitive holes, busy around or filling them, with a sort of noise (in a way). An essential noise. Necessary to make the bunch of mind tools work (satisfactorily).

Desires for example, these can be a complex business. Some are simple, basic or fundamental desires, then there are more complex instrumental desires. Desire/s and objective/s have a lot of sameness, the terms can be interchanged.

Desires/objective have about them displacements. By doing this or that other things are displaced.

My question specifically is of the work done by cognitive holes. The imperfect mind-tool-kit (in the context there is no perfect).

Not sure if this is what you had in mind, but I’d say that either/orism had great evolutionary survival benefit, but in complex societies is very often detrimental.

So for instance, if you are faced with a sabre-toothed tiger, making a near-instant decision to run or attack will often have better results than taking a few seconds to review the options, but if you are faced with possible attack from a neighbouring tribe, the opposite is most likely true.

I can immediately envision 5 different types on cognitive hole. So can’t answer your question until I’m clear about which type you mean.

1. Fundamentally inaccessible cognitive hole.

2. Cognitive hole blocked by negative thoughts.

3. Pregnant cognitive hole where the vacuum acts to protect baby thoughts from competitive thoughts that would kill it.

4. Cognitive hole that is full of passive garbage that tends to hinder entry of new thoughts.

5. Cognitive hole that is full of active garbage that accepts and perhaps even amplifies new thoughts, but in the process changes them out of all recognition.

All five types of cognitive hole could be present at the same time.

I’m able to classify the five types so easily because I’ve been playing with Conway’s game of Life. I’m using this as an analogue of the abiological generation of biological life,. But it can also be seen as an analogue of thought processes within the brain. At every generation there is an active region (thought) and an inactive region grading from vacuum to optimal density “ash”, which I’ve translated as “garbage” above. There can also be regions overdense with “ash”.

A type 1 is easily generated, types 3, 4 and 5 are very commonly found. The passive garbage tends to be that at optimal density while the active garbage consists of ash at both overly low and overly high densities. Type 2 very seldom occurs naturally but can be artificially created, and in the human psyche can be created by cognitive processes such as polarisation.

It’s sort of what the conscious mind does really (part of), it watches for holes, overseeing the mindtools’ operations. Looks at the outcomes of various efforts, looks for errors, and difficulties.

All that you mentioned I understood, three I thought are moreso what I was thinking, but for the moment I don’t know if that is simply because I understand them better, or feel I do, moll.

Thinking about things I guess often involves traversing categories, and domains perhaps, a combinatorial work of various mindtools, but such efforts that present with whatever exponentially complex require a patch of sorts, or instead of. Holding complex ideas can require constant effort, involve contradictory aspects, or conflicts (dissonance I suppose), even that it is unfinished/incomplete.

What i’m looking at is the idea that a cognitive hole can have a function, that it can do useful work. That the noise, the resolving, is a territory of sorts. That it can be attractive, even a centre like gravity.

I’m not of a vew cognitive holes are good or bad, or that they are interesting. They maybe neutral, and even tedious.

> the idea that cognitive holes have an attraction, the work done by cognitive holes

Based in numerical experiments here, you can’t say that a pregnant cognitive hole has any attraction, for the same reason that you can’t call a vacuum a generator of antigravity. Because non-vacuums have different gravitational/repulsive strengths. So a cognitive hole does no work.

Even with a pregnant cognitive hole, the initial seed thought has to be generated outside that cognitive hole. And most thoughts are equally happy to develop within and outside cognitive holes.

That said, and again based on numerical experiments, there are three types of thoughts that seem to seek out cognitive holes. A very common type is one that connects widely disparate parts of the psyche, think of it as an analogy generator, or on the molecular level as neurotransmitter nitrous oxide. This enjoys crossing cognitive holes because it is strongly suppressed by cognitive ash/garbage.

The second very common type is the thought that spreads quickly and evaporates quickly. A cognitive hole provides a space for it to spread.

The third type is very rare but far from unknown, it’s the type of thought that expands infinitely if unconfined, leaving behind ash/garbage in it’s wake.

>So a cognitive hole does no work

I’d think they’re highly exploitable, a resource.

Ideology for example.

Results of numerical simulations of cognitive hole.